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ALICE’S ADVENTURES 
IN WONDERLAND * * 


RETOLD IN WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE 


By MRS. J. C. GORHAM 

P f) 


FULLY ILLUSTRATED 


A. L. BURT COMPANY -v •<* •,* 

v * ..v ,* PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK, 


of GONGHfcSS 
i*o Copies Heuavuu 

JUL 12 lsf05 

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COPYRIGHT I905 

By A. U. BURT COMPANY 


ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND 
By Mrs. J. C. Gorham 



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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I. 

Down The Rabbit Hole 1 

CHAPTER II. 

The Pool of Tears 7 

CHAPTER III. 

A Race 14 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Rabbit sends in a Bill 19 

CHAPTER V. 

A Caterpillar Tells Alice what to Do 29 

CHAPTER VI. 

Pig and Pepper 40 

CHAPTER VII. 

A Mad Tea Party 50 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Queen’s Croquet Ground 58 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Mock Turtle 69 

CHAPTER X. 

The Lobster Dance 77 

CHAPTER XI. 

Who Stole the Tarts? 83 

CHAPTER XII. 

Alice on the Stand 91 










































































































































































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ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


CHAPTER I. 

DOWN THE RAB-BIT HOLE. 

Al-ice had sat on the bank by her sis-ter till she was 
tired. Once or twice she had looked at the book her sis-ter 
held in her hand, but there were 
no pict-ures in it, “ and what is 
the use of a book,” thought Alice, 

“ with-out pict-ures ? ” She asked 
her-self as well as she could, for 
the hot day made her feel quite 
dull, if it would be worth while to 
get up and pick some dai-sies to 
make a chain. Just then a white 
rab-bit with pink eyes ran close 
by her. 

That was not such a strange 
thing, nor did Alice think it so 
milch out of the way to hear the 
Rab-bit say, “ Oh dear ! Oh, dear • I shall be late ! ” But 
when the Rab-bit took a watch out of its pock-et, and looked 
at it and then ran on, Al-ice start-ed to her feet, for she 



2 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


knew that was the first time she had seen a Rab-bit with a 
watch. She jumped up and ran to get a look at it, and was 
just in time to see it pop down a large rab-bit hole near the 
hedge. 

As fast as she could go, Al-ice went down the hole 
af-ter it, and did not once stop to think how in the world 
she was to get out. 

The hole went straight on for some way and then 
turned down with a sharp bend, so sharp that Al-ice had 
no time to think to stop till she found her-self fall-ing in 
what seemed a deep well. 

She must not have moved fast, or the well must have 
been quite deep, for it took her a long time to go down, and 
as she went she had time to look at the strange things she 
passed. First she tried to look down and make out what 
was there, but it was too dark to see ; then she looked at 
the sides of the well and saw that they were piled with 
book-shelves ; here and there she saw maps hung on pegs. 
She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed. 
On it was the word Jam , but there was no jam in it, so she 
put it back on one of the shelves as she fell past it. 

“Well,” thought Al-ice to her-self, “ af-ter such a fall as 
this, I shall not mind a fall down stairs at all. How brave 
they’ll all think me at home ! Why, I wouldn’t say a thing 
if I fell off the top of the house.” (Which I dare say was 
quite true.) 

Down, down, down. Would the fall nev-er come to an 
end ? “ I should like to know,” she said, “ how far I have 


DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE. 


3 


come by this time. Wouldn’t it be strange if I should fall 
right through the earth and come out where the folks walk 
with their feet up and their heads down ? ” 

Down, down, down. “ Di-nah will miss me to-night,” 
Al-ice went on. (Di-nah was the cat.) “I hope they’ll 
think to give her her milk at tea-time. Di-nah, my dear ! 
I wish you were down here with me ! There are no mice 
in the air, but you might catch a bat, and that’s much like 
a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats?” And here 
Al-ice mnst have gone to sleep, for she dreamed that she 
walked hand in hand with Di-nah, and just as she asked 
her, “ Now, Di-nah, tell me the truth, do you eat bats % ” all 
at once, thump ! thump ! down she came on a heap of 
sticks and dry leaves, and the long fall was o-ver. 

Al-ice was not a bit hurt, but at once jumped to her 
feet. She looked up, but all was dark there. At the end 
of a long hall in front of her the white rab-bit was still in 
sight. There was no time to be lost, so off Al-ice went like 
the wind, and was just in time to hear it say, “ Oh, my 
ears, how late it is ! ” then it was out of sight. She found 
she was in a long hall with a low roof, from which hung a 
row of light-ed lamps. 

There were doors on all sides, but when Al-ice had been 
all round and tried each one, she found they were all 
locked. She walked back and forth and tried to think how 
she was to get out. At last she came to a stand made all of 
glass. On it was a ti-ny key of gold, and Al-ice’s first 
thought was that this might be a key to one of the doors of 


4 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


the hall, but when she had tried the key in each lock, she 
found the locks were too large or the key was too small — 
it did not fit one of them. But when she went round the 
hall once more she came to a low cur-tain which she had 
not seen at first, and when she drew this back she found 
a small door, not much more than a foot high ; she tried 
the key in the lock, and to her great joy it fit-ted ! 

Al-ice found that the door led to a hall the size of a rat 
hole ; she knelt down and 
looked through it in-to a gar- 
den of gay flow-ers. How she 
longed to get out of that dark 
hall and near those bright 
blooms ; but she could not so 
much as get her head through 
the door; “and if my head 
would go through, 1 ’ thought 
Al-ice, “ it would be of no use, 
for the rest of me would still 
Oh, how I wish I could shut 
up small ! I think I could if I knew how to start.” 

There seemed to be no use to wait by the small door, 
so she went back to the stand with the hope^that she might 
find a key to one of the large doors, or may-be a book of 
rules that would teach her to grow small. This time she 
found a small bot-tle on it (“ which I am sure was not here 
just now,” said Al-ice), and tied round the neck of the bot-tle 
was a tag with the words “ Drink me” printed on it. 



D OWN THE RABBIT HOLE. 


5 


It was all right to say “ Drink me,” but Al-ice was too 
wise to do that in haste : “ No, I’ll look first,” she said, “ and 
see if it’s marked ‘ poi-son’ or not,” for she had been taught 
if you drink much from a bot-tle marked 1 poi-son,’ it is sure 
to make you sick. This had no such mark on it, so she 
dared to taste it, and as she found it nice (it had, in fact, a 
taste of pie, ice-cream, roast fowl, 
and hot toast), she soon drank it 
off. 

“ How strange I feel,” said 
Al-ice. “I am sure I am not so 
large as I was ! ” 

And so it was ; she was now 
not quite a foot high, and her face 
light-ed up at the thought that 
she was now the right size to go 
through the small door and get 
out to that love-ly gar-den. 

Poor Al-ice ! When she reached 
the door she found that she had 
left the key on the stand, and when she went back for it, 
she found she could by no means reach it. She could see 
it through the glass, and she tried her best to climb one 
of the legs of the stand, but it was too sleek, and when she 
was quite tired out, she sat down and cried. 

“ Come, there’s no use to cry like that ! ” Al-ice said to 
her-self as stern as she could speak. “ I tell you to leave 
off at once ! ” 



6 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


Soon her eyes fell on a small glass box that lay on the 
floor. She looked in it and found* a tiny cake on which 
were the words “Eat me,” marked in grapes. “Well, I’ll 
eat it,” said Al-ice, “ and if it makes me grow tall, I can 
reach the key, and if it makes me shrink up, I can creep 
un-der the door ; so I’ll get out some way.” 

So she set to work and soon ate all the cake. 


THE POOL OF TEARS. 


7 


CHAPTER II. 


THE POOL OF TEARS. 

“ How strange ! Oh my!” said Al-ice, “ how tall I am, 
and all at once, too ! Good-by, feet.” (For when she looked 
down at her feet they seemed so far off, she thought they 
would soon be out of sight.) “ Oh, 
my poor feet, who will put on your 
shoes for you now, dears? I’m 
sure I shan’t do it. I shall be a 
great deal too far off to take care 
of you ; you must get on the best 
way you can ; but I must be kind 
to them,” thought Al-ice, “ or they 
won’t walk the way I want to go ! 
Let me see : I’ll give them a pair 
of new shoes each, Christ-mas.” 

She stopped to think how she 
would send them. “ They must go 
by the mail,” she thought ; “ and 
how fun-ny it’ll seem to send 
shoes to one’s own feet. How odd 
the ad-dress will look ! 

Al-ice’s Right Foot, Esq., 
Hearth-rug, 

Near the Fire. 
(With Al-ice’s love.) 

Oh dear, there’s no sense in all that.” 



ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


Just then her head struck the roof of the hall ; in fact 
she was now more than nine feet high, and she at once 
took up the small key and went back to the door. 

Poor Al-ice ! It was as much as she could do, when she 
lay down on one side, to look through to the gar-den with 

one eye : but to 
get through was 
not to be hoped 
for, so she sat 
down and had a 
good cry. 

“ Shame on 
you,” said Al-ice, 
“ a great big girl 
like you ” (she 
might well say 
this) “ to cry in 
this way ! Stop 
at once, I tell 
you ! ” But she 
went on all the 
same, and shed 
tears till there 
was a large pool all round her, and which reached half way 
down the hall. 

At last she heard the sound of feet not far off, then 
she dried her eyes in great haste to see who it was. It 
was the White Eab-bit that had come back, dressed in fine 



THE POOL OF TEARS. 


9 


clothes, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand, and a 
large fan in the oth-er. He trot-ted on in great haste, and 
talked to him-self as he came, “ Oh ! the Duch-ess, the 
Duch-ess ! Oh ! won’t she be in a fine rage if I’ve made 
her wait ? ” 

Al-ice felt so bad and so in need of help from some one, 
that when the Rab-bit came near, she said in a low tim-id 

voice, “ If yon please, sir ” The Rab-bit started as if 

shot, dropped the white kid gloves and the fan and ran off 
in-to the dark as fast as his two hind feet could take him. 

Al-ice took up the fan and gloves and as the hall was 
quite hot, she fanned her-self all the time she went on talk- 
ing. “ Dear, dear ! How queer all things are to-day ! 
Could I have been changed in the night ? Let me think : 
was I the same when I got up to-day ? Seems to me I 
didn’t feel quite the same. But if I’m not the same, then 
who in the world am I ? ” Then she thought of all the girls 
she knew that were of her age, to see if she could have 
been changed for one of them. 

“I’m sure I’m not A-da,”‘she said, “ for her hair is in 
such long curls and mine doesn’t curl at all ; and I’m sure 
I can’t be Ma-bel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, 
oh ! she knows such a lit-tle ! Then, she’s she, and I’m I, 
and — oh dear, how strange it all is ! I’ll try if I know all 
the things I used to know. Let me see : four times five 
is twelve, and four times six is thir-teen, and four times 

sev-en is oh dear ! that is not right. I must have been 

changed for Ma-bel ! I’ll try if I know ‘ How doth the lit- 


10 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


tie ’ ” and she placed her hands on her lap, as if she 

were at school and tried to say it, but her voice was hoarse 
and strange and the words did not come the same as they 
used to do. 

“ I’m sure those are not the right words,” said poor 
Al-ice, and her eyes filled with tears as she went on, “ I 
must be Ma-bel af-ter all, and I shall have to go and live in 
that po-ky house and have next to no toys to play with, 
and oh ! such hard things to learn. No, I’ve made up my 
mind ; if I’m Ma-bel, I’ll stay down here ! It’ll be no use 
for them to put their heads down and say, 1 Come up, 
dear ! ’ I shall look up and say, ‘ Who am I, then ? Tell me 
that first, and then if I like it, I’ll come up ; if not, I’ll stay 

down here till I’m some pne else ’• but, oh dear,” cried 

Al-ice with a fresh burst of tears, I do wish they would put 
their heads down ! I am so tired of this place ! ” 

As she said this she looked down at her hands and saw 
that she had put on one of the Rab-bit’s white kid gloves 
while she was talk-ing. “ How can I have done that ?” she 
thought. “ I must have grown small once more.” She got 
up and went to the glass stand to test her height by that, 
and found that as well as she could guess she was now not 
more than two feet high, and still shrink-ing quite fast. 
She soon found out that the cause of this, was the fan she 
held and she dropped it at once, or she might have shrunk 
to the size of a gnat. 

Al-ice was, at first, in a sad 'fright at the quick change, 
but glad that it was no worse. “ Now for the gar-den,” and 


THE POOL OF TEARS. 


11 


she ran with all her speed back to the small door ; but, oh 
dear! the door was shut, and the key lay on the glass 
stand, “ and things are worse than ev-er,” thought the poor 
child, “ for I nev-er was so 
small as this, nev-er ! It’s 
too bad, that it is ! ” 

As she said these words 
her foot slipped, and splash ! 
she was up to her chin in 
salt Ava-ter. At first she 
thought she must be in the 
sea, but she soon made out 
that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when 
she was nine feet high. 

I wish I hadn’t cried so much ! ” said Al-ice as she 

swam round and 
tried to find her 
way out. “I shall 
now be drowned 
in my own tears. 
That will be a 
queer thing, to be 
sure ! But all 
things are queer 
to-day.” 

J ust then she heard a splash in the pool a lit-tle way 
off, and she swam near to make out what it was ; at first 
she thought it must be a whale, but when she thought how 




12 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


small she was now, she soon made out that it was a mouse 
that had slipped in the pond. 

“ Would it he of an-y use now to speak to this mouse ? 
All things are so out-of-way down here, I should think 
may-be it can talk, at least there’s no harm to try.” So 
she said: “0 Mouse, do you know the way out of this 
pool? I have swum here till I’m quite tired, O Mouse ! ” 
The Mouse looked at her and seemed to her to wink with 
one of its small eyes, but it did not speak. 

“ It may be a French Mouse,” thought Al-ice, so she said : 
“Ou est ma chatte?” (Where is my cat?) which was all 
the French she could think of just then. The Mouse gave 
a quick leap out of the wa-ter, and seemed in a great fright, 
“ Oh, I beg your par-don,” cried Al-ice. “ I quite for-got you 
didn’t like cats.” 

“ Not like cats ! ” cried the Mouse in a shrill, harsh 
voice. “Would you like cats if you were me?” 

“ Well, I guess not,” said Al-ice, “ but please don’t get 
mad. And yet I wish I could show you our cat, Di-nah. I’m 
sure you’d like cats if you could see her. She is such a dear 
thing,” Al-ice went on half to her-self as she swam round 
in the pool, “ and she sits and purrs by the fire and licks 
her paws and wash-es her face — and she is such a nice soft 
thing to nurse — and she’s a fine one to catch mice — Oh, 
dear ! ” cried Al-ice, for this time the Mouse was in a great 
fright and each hair stood on end. “We won’t talk of her 
if you don’t like it.” 

“We talk | ” cried the Mouse, who shook down to the 


THE POOL OF TEARS. 


13 


end of his tail. “ As if I would talk of such low, mean 
things as cats ! All rats hate them. Don’t let me hear 
the name a-gain ! ” 

“ I won’t,” said Al-ice, in great haste to change the 
theme. “Are you fond — of — of dogs?” The mouse did 
not speak, so Al-ice went on : “ There is such a nice dog 
near our house, I should like to show you ! A ti-ny bright- 
eyed dog, you know, with oh ! such long cur-ly brown hair ! 
And it’ll fetch things when you throw them, and it’ll sit 
up and beg for its meat and do all sorts of things — I can’t 
tell you half of them. And it kills all the rats, and m — oh 
dear!” cried Al-ice in a sad tone, “I’ve made it mad a- 
gain ! ” For the Mouse swam off from her as fast as it 
could go, and made quite a stir in the pool as it went. 

So she called it in a soft, kind voice, “ Mouse dear ! Do 
come back and we won’t talk of cats or dogs if you don’t 
like them ! ” When the Mouse heard this it turned round 
and swam back to her; its face was quite pale (with rage, 
Al-ice thought), and it said in a low, weak voice, “ Let us 
get to the shore, and then I’ll tell you why it is I hate cats 
and dogs.” 

It was high time to go, for the pool was by this time 
quite crowded with the birds and beasts that had slipped 
in-to it. Al-ice led the way and they all swam to the shore. 


14 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


CHAPTER III. 

A RACE. 

They were a queer look-ing crowd as they stood or sat 
on the hank — the wings and tails of the birds drooped to 
the earth ; the fur of the beasts clung close to them, and 
all were as wet and cross as could be. 

The first 
thought, of 
course, was 
how to get 
dry. They 
had a long 
talk a-bout 
this, and 
Al-ice joined 
with them as 
if she had 
known them 
all her life. 

But it was hard to tell what was best. 

“ What I want to say,” at last spoke up the Do-do, “ is 
that the best thing to get us dry would be a race.” 

“ What kind of race ? ” asked Al-ice, not that she much 



A RACE. 


15 


want-ed to know, but the Do-do had paused as if it thought 
that some one ought to speak, and no one else would say a 
word. “ Why,” said the Do-do, “ the best way to make it 
plain is to do it.” (And as you might like to try the thing 
some cold day, I’ll tell you how the Do-do did it. 

First it marked out a race-course in a sort of ring (it 
didn’t care much for the shape), and then all the crowd 
were placed on the course, here and there. There was no 
“ One, two, three, and here we go,” but they ran when they 
liked and left off when they liked, so that no one could tell 
when the race was ended. When they had been running- 
half an hour or so and were all quite dry, fhe Do-do called 
out, “ The race is o-ver ! ” and they all crow-ded round it and 
and asked, u But who has won ? ” 

This the Do-do could not, at first, tell, but sat for a long 
time with one claw pressed to its head while the rest wait-ed, 
but did not speak. At last the Do-do said, “ All have won 
and each must have a prize.” 

“ But who is to give them ? ” all asked at once. 

“ Why, she of course,” said the Do-do, as it point-ed to 
Al-ice with one long claw ; and the whole par-ty at once 
crowd-ed round her as they called out, “ A prize, a prize ! ” 
Al-ice did not know what to do, but she pulled from her 
pock-et a box of lit-tle cakes (by a strange, good luck they 
did not get wet while she was in the pool) and hand-ed them 
round as priz-es. There was one a-piece all round. 

“ But she must have a prize, you know,” said the 
Mouse. 


16 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 



“ Of course,” the Do-do said. “ What else have you 
got ? ” he went on as he turned to Al-ice. 

“ A thim-ble,” said Al-ice looking quite sad. 

“Hand it here,” said the Do-do. 

Then they all crowd-ed round her once more, while the 

Do-do hand-ed 
the thimble back 
to Al-ice and said, 
“ We beg that 
you accept this 
fine thim-ble ; ” 
and when it had 
made this short 
speech they all 
cheered. 

Al-ice thought 
the whole thing 
quite f ool-ish, but 
they all looked so 
grave that she 
did not dare to 
laugh, and as 
she could not think what to say she bowed and took the 
thim-ble, while she looked as staid as she could. 

The next thing was to eat the cakes : this caused some 
noise, as the large birds said they could not taste theirs, 
and the small ones choked and had to be pat-ted on the 


A RACE. 


IT 


back. It was o-ver at last and they sat down in a ring and 
begged the Mouse to tell them a tale. 

“ You said you would tell us why you hate cats and 
dogs,” said Al-ice. 

“ Mine is a long and a sad tale,” said the Mouse, as it 
turned to Al-ice with a sigh. 

“ It is a long tail, I’m sure,” said Al-ice, look-ing down 
at the Mouse’s tail ; “ but why do you call it sad ? ” 

“I shall not tell you,” said the Mouse, as it got up 
and walked off. 

“ Please come back and tell us your tale,” called Al-ice ; 
and all joined in, “ Yes, please do ! ” but the Mouse shook 
its head and walked on and was soon out of sight. 

“ I wish I had our Di-nah here, I know I do!” said 
Al-ice. “ She’d soon fetch it back.” 

“And who is Di-nah, if I may dare to ask such a 
thing ? ” said one of the birds. 

Al-ice was glad to talk of her pet. “ Di-nah’s our cat ; 
and she’s such a fine one to catch mice, you can’t think. 
And oh, I wish you could see her chase a bird ! Why she’ll 
eat a bird as soon as look at it ! ” 

This speech caused a great stir in the par-ty. Some of 
the birds rushed off at once ; one old jay wrapped it-self up 
with care and said, “I must get home; the night air 
doesn’t suit my throat ! ” and a wren called out to her 
brood, “Come, my dears! It’s high time you were all in 
bed.” 

Soon they all moved off and Al-ice was left a-lone. 


18 


ALICE IN' WONDERLAND. 


“ I wish I hadn’t told them of Di-nah,” she said to her 
self. “ No one seems to like her down here, and I’m sure 
she’s the best cat in the world ! Oh, my dear Di-nah ! Shall 
I ev-er see you an-y more ? ” And here poor Al-ice burst in- 
to tears, for she felt ver-y sad and lone-ly. In a short time 
she heard the pat-ter of feet, and she looked up with the 
hope that the Mouse had changed its mind and come back 
to tell his “ long and sad tale.” 


THE RABBIT SENDS IN A BILL. 


19 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE RAB-BIT SENDS IN A BILL. 

It was the White Rab-bit who trot-ted back a-gain. It 
looked from side to side as it went as if it had lost some- 
thing ; and Al-ice heard it say to it-self, “ The Duch-ess ! 
The Duch-ess ! Oh, my dear paws ! She’ll get my head cut 
off as sure as rats are rats ! Where can I have lost them ! ” 
Al-ice guessed at once that he was in search of the fan and 
the pair of white kid gloves, and like the good girl that she 
was, she set out to hunt for them, but they were not to be 
found. All things seemed to have changed since her swim 
in the pool ; the great hall with the glass stand and the 
lit-tle door — all were gone. Soon the Rab-bit saw Al-ice and 
called out to her, “ Why, Ann, what are you out here for? 
Run home at once, and fetch me a pair of gloves and a 
fan ! Quick, now ! ” And Al-ice was in such a fright that 
she ran off and did not wait to tell it who she was. 

“ He took me for his house-maid” she said to her-self 
as she ran. “What will he think when he finds out who I 
am ! But I must take him his fan and gloves — that is if 
I can find them.” 

As she said this she came to a small neat house on the 
door of which was a bright brass plate with the name W. 
Rab-bit on it. She ran up-stairs in great fear lest she should 


20 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


meet Ann and be turned out of the house be-fore she had 
found the fan and gloves. 

“ How queer it seems that I should do things for a Bab- 
bit ! I guess Di-nah’ll send me to wait on her next ! ” 

By this time she had made her way to a ti-dy room 
with a ta-ble near the w T all, and on it, as she had hoped, a 
fan and two or three pairs of small white kid gloves. She 



took up the fan and a pair of gloves, and turned to leave 
the room, when her eye fell up-on a small bot-tle that stood 
near. There was no tag this time with the words “ Drink 
me,” but Al-ice put it to her lips. “ I know I am sure to 
change in some way, if I eat or drink any-thing ; so I’ll 
just see what this does. I do hope it’]l make me grow 
large a-gain, for I’m quite tired of this size,” Al-ice said to 
her-self, 



THE RABBIT SENDS IN A BILL. 


21 


It did as she had wished, for in a short time her head ' 
pressed the roof so hard she couldn’t stand up straight. 
She put the bot-tle down in haste and said, “ That’s as much 
as I need — I hope I shan’t grow an-y more — as it is, I can’t 
get out at the door — I do wish I hadn’t drunk so much ! ” 

But it was too late to wish that ! She grew and grew, 
till she had to kneel down on the floor ; next there was not 
room for this and she had to lie down. Still she grew and 
grew and grew till she had to put one arm out the window 
and one foot up the chim-ney and said to her-self, “ Now I 
can do no more, let come what may.” There seemed no 
sort of chance that she could ev-er get out of the room. 

“ I wish I was at home,” thought poor Al-ice, “ where I 
wouldn’t change so much, and where I didn’t have to do 
things for mice and rab-bits. I wish I hadn’t gone down 
that rab-bit hole — and yet — and yet — it’s queer, you know, 
this sort of life ! When I used to read fair-y tales, I thought 
they were just made up by some one, and now here I am 
in one my-self. When I grow up I’ll write a book a-bout 
these strange things — but I’m grown up now,” she added 
in a sad tone, “ at least there’s no room to grow an-y more 
here.” 

She heard a voice out-side and stopped to list-en. 

“ Ann ! Ann ! ” said the voice, “ fetch me my gloves, 
quick ! ” Then came the sound of feet on the stairs. Al-ice 
knew it was the Bab-bit and that it had come to look for 
her. She quaked with fear till she shook the house. Poor 
thing ! She didn’t think that she was now more than ten 


22 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


times as large as the Bab-bit, and that she had no cause to 
he a-fraid of it. 

Soon the Rab-bit came to the door and tried to come, 
in, but Al-ice’s arm pressed it so hard the door would not 
move. Al-ice heard it say, “ Then I’ll go round and get in 
at the win-do w.” 

“ That you won’t ! ” thought Al-ice ; then she wait-ed 

till she heard the Rab-bit quite 
near the win-dow, then spread 
out her hand and made a snatch 
in the air. She did not get hold 
of it, but she heard a shriek 
and a fall. 

Next came an an-gry voice 
— the Rab-bit’s — “ Pat ! Pat ! 
Where are you ? ” And then a 
voice which was new to her, 
“ Sure then, I’m here ! Dig- 
ging for apples, yer hon-or ! ” 
“Dig-ging for ap-ples, in- 
deed ! ” said the Rab-bit. “ Here ! 
Come and help me out of this ! Now, tell me, Pat, what’s 
that in the win-dow ? ” 

“ Sure it’s an arm, yer hon-o^” 

“ An arm, you goose ! Who-ever saw one that size ? 
Why, it fills the whole win-dow ! ” 

“ Sure it does, yer hon-or ; but it’s an arm for all that.” 

“ Well, it has no right there ; go and take it out ! ” 



THE RABBIT SENDS IN A BILL. 


23 


For a long time they seemed to stand still, but now and 
then Al-ice could hear a few words in a low voice, such as, 
“ Sure I don’t like it, yer hon-or, at all, at all ! ” 

“ Do as I tell you, you cow-ard ! ” and at last she spread 
out her hand and made a snatch in the air. This time 
there were two lit-tle shrieks. 

“ I should like to know what they’ll do next ! As to 
their threats to pull me out, I on-ly wish they could. I’m 
sure I don’t want to stay in here.” 

She wait-ed for some time, but all was still; at last 
came the noise of small cart wheels and the sound of 
voi-ces, from which she made out the words, “ Where’s the 
oth-er lad-der ? Why, I hadn’t to bring but one ; Bill’s got 
the oth-er. Bill, fetch it here, lad ! Here, put ’em up 
at this place. No, tie ’em first — they don’t reach half as 
high as they should yet — oh, they’ll do. Here, Bill ! catch 
hold of this rope — Will the roof bear? Mind that loose 
slate — oh, here it comes ! Look out. (A loud crash.) — Now 
who did that ? It was Bill, I guess — Who’s to go down the 
chim-ney ? Nay, I shan’t ! You do it ! — That I won’t then ! 
— Bill’s got to go down — Here, Bill, you’ve got to go down 
the chim-ney ! ” 

“ Oh, so Bill’s got to come down, has he ? ” said Al-ice to 
her-self. “ Why, they seem to put all the work on Bill. I 
wouldn’t be in Bill’s place for a good deal ; this fire-place is 
small, to be sure, but I think I can kick some.” 

She drew her foot as far down as she could, and wait-ed 
till she heard a small beast (she couldn’t guess of what 


24 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


sort it was) come scratch ! scratch ! clown the chim-ney quite 
close to her ; then she said to her-self : “ This is Bill,” gave 
one sharp kick and wait-ed to see what would hap-pen next. 

The first thing she heard was, 
“ There goes Bill ! ” then the Bab- 
bit’s voice, “Catch him, you by the 
hedge ! ” Then all was still, then 
the voices — “ Hold up his head — 
Wine now — Don’t choke him — How 
was it, old f el-low ? What sent you 
up so fast ? Tell us all a-bout it ! ” 
Last came a weak voice (“That’s 
Bill,” thought Al-ice), “ Well, I don’t 
know — no more, thank’ye, I’m not 
so weak now — but I’m a deal too 
shocked to tell you — all I know is, 
a thing comes at me like a Jack- 
in-the-box, and up I goes like a 
rocket.” 

“ So you did, old fel-low,” said 
the oth-ers. 

“We must burn the house 
down,” said the Bab-bit’s voice, and 
Al-ice called out as loud as she could, 
“ If you do, I’ll set Di-nah at you ! ” 
At once all was still as death, and Al-ice thought, 
“ What will they do next ? If they had an-y sense, they’d 
take the roof off.” 



THE RABBIT SENDS IN A BILL. 


25 


Then she heard the Rab-bit say, “ One load will do to 
start with.” 

“A load of what ? ” thought Al-ice,. but she had not 
long to doubt, for soon a show-er of small stones came in 
at the win-dow, and some of them hit her in the face. 
“ I’ll put a stop to this,” she said to her-self, and shout-ed 
out, “You stop that, at once !” A-gain all was still as death. 

Al-ice saw that the stones all changed to small cakes 
as they lay on the floor, and a bright thought came do her. 
“ If I eat one of these cakes,” she said,“ it is sure to make 
some change in my size ; and as it can’t make me larg-er, 
I hope it will change me to the size I used to be.” 

So she ate one of the cakes and was glad to see that 
she shrank quite fast. She was soon so small that she 
could get through the door, so she ran out of the house and 
found quite a crowd of beasts and birds in the yard. The 
poor liz-ard, Bill, was in the midst of the group, held up 
by two guin-ea pigs, who gave it some-thing to drink out 
of a bot-tle. They all made a rush at Al-ice, as soon as 
she came out, but she ran off as hard as she could, and was 
soon safe in a thick wood. 

“ The first thing I’ve got to do,” said Al-ice to her-self, 
as she walked round in the wood, “ is to grow to my right 
size again ; and the next thing is to find my way to that 
love-ly gar-den. I think that will be the best plan.” 

It was a fine scheme, no doubt, and well planned, but 
the hard thing was that she did not in the least know how 
she should start to ^vork it out; and while she peered round 


26 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


through the trees, a sharp bark just o-ver her head made 
her look up in great haste. 

A great pup-py looked down at her with large round 
eyes, stretched out one paw and tried to touch her. “ Poor 



thing ! ” said Al-ice in a kind tone and tried hard to show it 
that she wished to be its friend, but she was in a sore fright, 
lest it should eat her up. 

Al-ice could not think what to do next, so she picked up 
a bit of stick and held it out to the pup-py. It jumped 


THE RABBIT SENDS IN A BILL. 


27 


from the tree with a yelp of joy as if to play with it ; then 
Al-ice dodged round a large plant that stood near, but the 
pup-py soon found her and made a rush at the stick a-gain, 
but tum-bled head o-ver heels in its haste to get hold of it. 
Al-ice felt that it was quite like a game with a cart horse, 
and looked at each turn 
to be crushed ’neath its 
great feet. At last, to 
her joy, it seemed to 
grow tired of the sport 
and ran a good way off 
and sat down with its 
tongue out of its mouth 
and its big eyes half shut. 

This seemed to Al- 
ice a good time to get 
out of its sight, so she 
set out at once and ran 
till she was quite tired 
and out of breath, and 
till the pup-py’s bark 
sound-ed quite faint. 

“ And yet what a dear pup-py it was,” said Al-ice, as she 
stopped to rest and fanned her-self with a leaf : “ I should 
have liked so much to teach it tricks, if — if I’d been the 
right size to do it ! Oh dear ! I’ve got to grow up a-gain ! 
Let me see — how am I to do it ? I guess I ought to eat or 
drink some-thing, but I don’t know what ! ” 



28 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


Al-ice looked all round her at the blades of grass, the 
blooms, the leaves, but could not see a thing that looked like 
the right thing to eat or drink to make her grow. 

There was a large mush-room near her, a-bout the 
same height as she was, and when she had looked all round 
it, she thought she might as well look and see what was 
on the top of it. She stretched up as tall as she could, and 
her eyes met those of a large blue cat-er-pil-lar that sat on 
the top with its arms fold-ed, smok-ing a queer pipe with a 
long stem that bent and curved round it like a hoop. 


A CATERPILLAR TELLS ALICE WHAT TO DO. 


29 


CHAPTER V. 

A CAT-ER-PIL-LAR TELLS ALICE WHAT TO DO. 

The Cat-er-pil-lar looked at Al-ice, and she stared at it, 
but did not speak. At last, it took the pipe from its mouth 
and said, “ AYho are you ?” Al-ice said, “ I’m not sure, sir, 
who I am just now — I know who I was when I left home, 
but I think I have been changed two or three times since 
then.” 

“What do you mean by that?” asked the Cat-er- 
pil-lar. 

“ I fear I can’t tell you, for I’m sure I don’t know, my- 
self ; but to change so man-y times all in one day, makes 
one’s head swim.” 

“ It doesn’t,” said the Cat-er-pil-lar. 

“ Well, may-be you haven’t found it so yet,” said Al-ice, 
“but when you have to change — you will some day, 
you know — I should think you’d feel it queer, won’t 
you ? ” 

“ Not a bit,” said the Cat-er-pil-lar. 

“Well, you may not feel as Ido,” said Al-ice; “alll 
know is, it feels queer to me to change so much.” 

“You !” said the Cat-er-pil-lar with its nose in the air. 
“ Who are you ? ” 


30 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


Which brought them back to the point from which 
they start-ed. Al-ice was not pleased at this, so she said 
in as stern a voice as she could, “ I think you ought to 
tell me who you are first.” 

“ Why?” said the Cat-er-pil-lar. 

As Al-ice could not think what to say to this and as it 
did not seem to want to talk, she turned a- way. 

“ Come back ! ” said the Cat-er-pil-lar. “ I have some- 
thing to say to you ! ” 

Al-ice turned and came back. 

“ Keep your tem-per,” said the Cat-er-pil-lar. 

“Is that all?” asked Al-ice, while she hid her an-ger as 
well as she could. 

“ No,” said the Cat-er-pil-lar. 

Al-ice wait-ed what seemed to her a long time, while it 
sat and smoked but did not speak. At last, it took the pipe 
from its mouth, and said, “ So you think you’re changed, 
do you ? ” 

“ I fear I am, sir,” said Al-ice, “ I don’t know things as 
I once did — and I don’t keep the same size, but a short 
while at a time.” 

“ What things is it you don’t know ? ” 

“Well, I’ve tried to say the things I knew at school, 
but the words all came wrong.” 

“ Let me hear you say , 4 You are old, Fath-er Wil-liam,’ ” 
said the Cat-er-pil-lar. 

Al-ice folded her hands, and be-gan : — 


A CATERPILLAR TELLS ALICE WHAT TO DO. 


31 



“ ‘ You are old, Fath-er Wil-liam,’ the young man said, 
4 And your hair has be-come ver-y white, 

And yet you stand all the time on your head — 

Do you think, at your age, it is right ? ’ 


“ 4 In my youth,’ Fath-er Wil-liam then said to his son, 
4 1 feared it might in-jure the brain ; 

But now that I know full well I have none, 

Why, I do it a-gain and a-gain.’ 


" 4 You are old,’ said the youth, 4 shall I tell you once more? 
And are now quite as large as a tun ; 


82 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 



Yet yon turned a back som-er-set in at the door — 
Pray, tell me now, how was that done ? ’ 

“ 1 In my youth,’ said the sage, as he shook his gray 
locks, 

I kept all my limbs ver-y sup-pie 
By the use of this oint-ment — one shil-ling the box — 
Al-low me to sell you a coup-le.’ 

“ 1 You are old, 1 said the youth, and your jaws are too 
weak 

For an-y thing tough-ei; than su-et ; 


A CATERPILLAR TELLS ALICE WHAT TO DO. 


33 



Yet yon ate up the goose, with the bones and the 
beak : 

Pray, how did you man-age to do it ? ’ 


“ 6 In my youth,’ said his fath-er, ‘ I took to the law 
And ar-gued each case with my wife ; 

And the ver-y great strength, which it gave to my jaw, 
Has last-ed the rest of my life.’ 


“ 6 You are old,’ said the youth ; ‘ one would hard-ly sup- 
pose 

That your eye was as stead-y as ev-er ; 


34 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 



Yet you bal-ance an eel on the end of your nose — 

What makes you al-ways so clev-er * ’ 

“ ‘ I have re-plied to three ques-tions, and that is 
e-nough,’ 

Said the fath-er ; ‘ don’t give your-self airs ! 

Do you think I can lis-ten all day to such stuff ? 

Be off, or I’ll kick you down-stairs ! ’ ” 


“ That is not said right,” said the Cat-er-pil-lar. 

“ Not quite right, I fear,” said Al-ice, “ some of the 
words are changed.” 


A CATERPILLAR TELLS ALICE WHAT TO DO. 


35 


“ It is wrong from first to last, 1 ’ said the Cat-er-pil-lar ; 
then did not speak for some time. At last it said, “ What 
size do you want to be ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t care so much as to size, but one does’nt 
like to change so much, you know.” 

“ I don’t know,” it said. 

Al-ice was too much vexed to speak, for she had nev-er, 
in all her life, been talked to in that rude way. 

“ Do you like your size now ?” asked the Cat-er-pil-lar. 

“Well, I’m not quite so large as I would like to 
be,” said Al-ice ; “ three inch-es is such a wretch-ed height 
to be.” 

“ It is a good height, in-deed ! ” said the Cat-er-pil-lar, 
and reared it-self up straight as it spoke. (It was just three 
inch-es high.) 

“ But I’m not used to it ! ” plead-ed poor Al-ice. And 
she thought, “ I wish the things wouldn’t be so ea-sy to get 
mad ! ” 

“You’ll get used to it in time,” the Cat-er-pil-lar said, 
and put the pipe to its mouth, and Al-ice wait-ed till it 
should choose to speak. At last it took the pipe from its 
mouth, yawned once or twice, then got down from its perch 
and crawled off in the grass. As it went it said, “ One side 
will make you tall, and one side will make you small. 

“ One side of what ? ” thought Al-ice to her-self.” 

“ Of the mush-room,” said the Cat-er-pil-lar, just as if 
it had heard her speak ; soon it was out of sight. 

Al-ice stood and looked at the mush-room a long time 


36 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


and tried to make out which were the two sides of it ; as it 
was round she found this a hard thing to do. At last she 
stretched her arms round it as far as they would go , and 
broke off a bit of the edge with each hand. 

“And now which is which?” she said to her-self, and 
ate a small piece of the right-hand bit, to try what it would 
do. The next ino-ment she felt her chin strike her foot 
with a hard blow. 

She was in a sore fright at this quick change, but she 
felt that there was no time to be lost as she was shrink-ing 
so fast ; so she set to work at once to eat some from the 
left hand bit. 

“ Come, my head’s free at last ! ” said Al-ice, with great 
joy, which changed to fear when she found that her waist 
and hands were no-where to be seen. All she could see 
when she looked down was a vast length of neck, which 
seemed to rise like a stalk out of a sea of green leaves that 
lay far be-low her. 

“ What can all that green stuff be? ” said Al-ice. “ And 
where has my waist got to ? And oh, my poor hands, how 
is it I can’t see you ? ” She moved them as she spoke ; the 
green leaves shook as if to let her know her hands were 
i there, but she could not see them. 

As there seemed to be no chance to get her hands up 
to her head, she tried to get her head down to them and 
was pleased to find that her neck would bend a-bout like a 
snake. Just as she had curved it down and meant to dive 


A CATERPILLAR TELLS ALICE WHAT TO DO. 37 

in the sea of green, which she found was the tops of the 
trees ’neath which she had been walk-ing, a sharp hiss 
made her draw back in haste. A large bird had flown 
in-to her face, and struck her with its wings. 

“ Snake ! snake ! ” screamed the bird. 

“ I’m not a snake,” said Al-ice. “ Let me a-lone !” 

“ Snake, I say, Snake ! ” cried the bird, then add-ed with 
a kind of sob, “ I’ve tried all ways, but I can-not suit them.” 
“ I don’t know what you mean,” said Al-ice. 

The bird seemed not to hear her, but went on, “ I’ve 
tried the roots of trees, and I’ve tried banks, and I’ve tried 
a hedge ; but those snakes ! There’s no way to please 
them. As if it were not hard work to hatch the eggs, but 
I must watch for snakes night and day ! Why I haven’t 
had a wink of sleep these three weeks ! ” 

“ It’s too bad for you to be so much put out,” said Al-ice, 
who be-gan to see what it meant. 

“ And just as I had built my nest in this high tree,” 
the bird went on, rais-ing its voice to a shriek, “ and just 
as I thought I should be free of them at last, they must 
needs fall down from the sky! Ugh ! Snake ! ” 

“But I’m not a snake, I tell you!” said Al-ice. “I’m 
a I'm a ” 

“Well! What are you?” said the bird. “I can see 
you will not tell me the truth ! ” 

“ I — I’m a lit-tle girl,” said Al-ice, though she was not 
sure what she was when she thought of all the chang-es 
she had gone through that day. 


38 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


“ I’ve seen girls in my time, but none with such a neck 
as that ! ” said the bird. “ No ! no ! You’re a snake ; and 
there’s no use to say you’re not. I guess you’ll say next 
that you don’t eat eggs ! ” 

“ Of course I eat eggs,” said Al-ice, “but girls eat eggs 
quite as much as snakes do, you know.” 

“ I don’t know,” said the bird, “ but if they do, why 
then they’re a kind of snake, that’s all I can say.” 

This was such a new thing to Al-ice that at first, she 
did not speak, which gave the bird a chance to add, “ You 
want eggs now, I know that quite well.” 

“ But I don’t want eggs, and if I did I should-n’t want 
yours. I don’t like them raw.” 

“ Well, be off, then! ” said the bird as it sat down in 
its nest. 

Al-ice crouched down through the trees as well as she 
could, for her neck would twist round the boughs, and 
now and then she had to stop to get it off. At last, she 
thought of the mush-room in her hands, and set to work 
with great care, to take a small bite first from the right 
hand, then from the left, till at length she brought her-self 
down to the right size. 

It was so long since she had been this height, that it 
felt quite strange, at first, but she soon got used to it. 

“Come, there’s half my plan done now!” she said. 
“ How strange all these things are ! I’m not sure one hour, 
what I shall be the next ! I’m glad I’m back to my right 
size : the next thing is, to get in-to that gar-den— how is 


A CATERPILLAR TELLS ALICE WHAT TO DO. 


39 


that to be done, I should like to know ? ” As she said this, 
she saw in front of her, a small house, not more than four 
feet high. “Who lives there?” thought Al-ice, “it’ll not 
do at all to come up-on them this size : why I should scare 
them out of their wits ! ” 

So she ate some of the right hand bit, a-gain and did 
not dare to go near the house till she had brought her-self 
down to nine inch-es high. 


40 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


CHAPTER VI. 

PIG AND PEP-PER. 

For a while Al-ice stood and looked at the house and 
tried to think what to do next, when a foot-man ran out of 

the wood (from the 
way he was dress- 
ed, she took him to 
be a foot -man ; 
though if she had 
judged by his face 
she would have 
called him a fish) 
and knocked at the 
door with his fist.' 
A foot-man with a 
round face and 
large eyes, came to 
the door. Al-ice 
want-ed to know 
what it all meant, 
so she crept a short 
way out of the wood to hear wdiat they said. 

The Fish-Foot-man took from un-der his arm a great 



PIG AND PEPPER. 


41 


let-ter and hand-ed it to the oth-er and said in a grave 
tone “ For the Dnch-ess ; from the Queen.” The Frog- 
Foot-man said in the same grave tone, “ From the Queen, 
for the Duch-ess.” Then they both bowed so low that 
their heads touched each oth-er. 

All this made Al-ice laugh so much that she had to run 
back to the wood for fear they would hear her, and when 
she next peeped out the Fish-Foot-man was gone, and the 
oth-er sat on the ground near the door and stared up at 
the sky. 

Al-ice went up to the door and knocked. 

“ There’s no sort of use for you to knock,” said the 
Foot-man, “ I’m on the same side of the door that you are, 
and there is so much noise in the room that no one could 
hear you.” There was, in-deed, a great noise in the house 
— a howl-ing and sneez-ing, with now and then a great 
crash, as if a dish or a pot had been bro-ken to piec-es. 

“ Please, then,” said Al-ice, “ how am I to get in \ ” 

“ There might be some sense in your knock-ing,” the 
Foot-man went on, “ if we were not both on the same side 
of the door. If you were in the room, you might knock 
and I could let you out, you know.” He looked up at the 
sky all the time he was speak-ing, which Al-ice thought 
was quite rude. “ But per-haps he can’t help it,” she 
thought, “ his eyes are so near the top of his head. Still 
he might tell me what I ask him — How am I to get in ? ” 
she asked. 

“ I shall sit here,” the Foot-man said, “ till to-mor-row — ” 


42 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


Just then the door of the house flew o-pen and a large 
plate skimmed out straight at his head ; it just grazed his 
nose and broke on one of the trees near him. “ — or next 
day, may-be,” he went on in the same tone as if he had not 
seen the plate. 



“How am I to get in?” Al-ice asked as loud as she 
could speak. 

“ Are you to get in at all ? ” he said. “ That’s the first 
thing, you know.” 

It was, no doubt ; but Al-ice didn’t like to be told so. 

The Foot-man seemed to think this a good time to say 
a-gain, “ I shall sit here on and off, for days and days.” 

“ But what am I to do?” said Al-ice. 


PIG AND PEPPER. 


43 


“ Do what you like,” he said. 

“ Oh, there’s no use to try to talk to him,” said Al-ice ; 
“ he has no sense at all.” And she o-pened the door and 
went in. 

The door led right in-to a large room that was full of 
smoke from end to end : the Duch-ess sat on a stool and 
held a child in her arms ; the cook stood near the fire and 
stirred a large pot which seemed to be full of soup. 

“ There’s too much pep-per in that soup ! ” Al-ice said 
to her-self as well as she could for sneez-ing. There was too 
much of it in the air, for the Duch-ess sneezed now and 
then ; and as for the child, it sneezed and howled all the 
time. 

A large cat sat on the hearth grin-ning from ear to ear. 

“ Please, would you tell me,” said Al-ice, not quite sure 
that it was right for her to speak first, “why your cat 
grins like that ? ” 

It’s a Che-shire cat,” said the Duch-ess, “ and that’s 
why. Pig ! ” 

She said the last word so loud that Al-ice jumped ; but 
she soon saw that the Duch-ess spoke to the child and not 
to her, so she went on : 

“ I didn’t know that Che-shire cats grinned ; in fact, I 
didn’t know that cats could grin.” 

“ They all can,” said the Duch-ess ; “ and most of ’em 

do.” 

“ I don’t know of an-y that do,” Al-ice said, quite 
pleased to have some one to talk with. 


44 


ALICE IK WONDERLAND. 


“ You don’t know much,” said the Duch-ess ; “ and 
that’s a fact.” 

Al-ice did not at all like the tone in which this was 
said, and thought it would be as well to speak of some- ' 
thing else. While she tried to think of what to say, the 
cook took the pot from the fire, and at once set to work 
throw-ing things at the Duch-ess and the child — the tongs 
came first, then pots, pans, plates and cups flew thick and 
fast through the air. The Duch-ess did not seem to see 
them, e-ven when they hit her ; and the child had howled 
so loud all the while, that one could not tell if the blows 
hurt it or not. 

“ Oh, please mind what you do ! ” cried Al-ice, as she 
jumped up and down in great fear, lest she should be 
struck. 

“ Hold your tongue,” said the Duch-ess ; then she be- 
gan a sort of song to the child, giv-ing it a hard shake at 
the end of each line. 

At the end of the song she threw the child at Al-ice 
and said, “ Here, you may nurse it a bit if you like ; I 
must go and get read-y to play cro-quet with the Queen,” 
and she left the room in great haste. The cook threw a 
pan after her as she went, but it just missed her. 

Al-ice caught the child, which held out its arms and ^ 
legs on all sides, “ just like a star-fish,” Al-ice thought. The 
poor thing snort-ed like a steam en-gine when she caught 
it, and turned a-bout so much, it was as much as she could 
do at first to hold it* 


PIG AND PEPPER. 


45 


As soon as she found out the right way to nurse it, 
(which was to twist it up in a sort of knot, then keep tight 
hold of its right ear and left foot), she took it out in the 
fresh air. “ If I don’t take this child with me,” thought 
Al-ice, “ they’re sure to kill it in a day or two ; wouldn’t it 
be wrong to leave it here ? ” She said the last words out 
loud, and the child grunt-ed (it had left off sneez-ing by 
this time). “ Don’t grunt,” said 
Al-ice, “that is not at all the 
right way to do.” 

The child grunt-ed a-gain 
and Al-ice looked at its face to 
see what was wrong with it. 

There could be no doubt that it 
had a turn-up nose, much more 
like a snout than a child’s nose. 

Its eyes were quite small too ; 
in fact she did not like the look 
of the thing at all. 

“ Per-haps that was not a 
grunt, but a sob,” and she 
looked to see if there were tears in its eyes. 

No, there were no tears. “If you’re go-ing to turn 
in-to a pig, my dear,” said Al-ice, “ I’ll have no more to do 
with you. Mind now ! ” The poor thing sobbed once more 
(or grunted, Al-ice couldn’t say which). 

“ Now, what am I to do with this thing when I get 
it home ? ” thought Al-ice, Just then it grunt-ed so loud that 



46 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


she looked down at its face with some fear. This time 
there could be no doubt a-bout it — it was a pig ! 

So she set 
it down, and 
felt glad to see 
it trot off in-to 
the wood. 

As she turn- 
ed to walk on, 
she saw the 
Che-shire Cat 
on the bough of 
a tree a few 
grinned when it 
looked like a good cat, 
it had long claws 
she felt she ought 

y.-ice, “ would you 
please tell me which way I ought to 
walk from here ? ” 

“ That de-pends a good deal on 
where you want to go to,” said the Cat. 

“ I don’t much care where ” 

said Al-ice. 

“ Then you need not care which way you walk,” said 
the Cat. 

“ - so long as I get somewhere,” Al-ice add-ed, 



PIG AND PEPPER. 


47 


“ Oh, you’re sure to do that if you don’t stop,” said the Cat. 
Al-ice knew that this was true, so she asked : “ What 
sort of peo-ple live near here ? ” 

“ In that way,” said the Cat, with a wave of its right 
paw, “lives a Hat-ter ; and in that way,” with a wave of its 
left paw, “ lives a March Hare. Go to see the one you like ; 
they’re both mad.” 

“ But I don’t want to go where mad folks live,” said 




Al-ice. 

“ Oh, you 
can’t help that,” 
said the Cat, 

“ we’re all mad 
here. I’m mad. 

You’re mad.” 

“How do you 
know I’m 
mad ? ” asked 
Al-ice. 

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have 
come here.” 

Al-ice didn’t think that proved it at all, but she went 
on ; “ and how do you know that you are mad ? ” 

“ First,” said the Cat, “ a dog’s not mad. You grant 



that ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ Well, then,” the Cat went on, “you know a dog growls 
when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. 


48 ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 

Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m 
an-gry. So you see, I’m mad.” 

“ I say the cat purrs ; I do not call it a growl,” said 
Al-ice. 

“ Call it what you like,” said the Cat. “ Do you play 
cro-quet with the Queen to-day ? ” 

“ I should like it, but I haven’t been asked yet,” said 
Al-ice. 

“ You’ll see me there,” said the Cat, then fa-ded out of 
sight. 

Al-ice did not think this so queer as she was now used 
to strange things. While she still looked at the place 
where it had been, it came back a-gain, all at once. 

“ By-the-by, what be-came of the child ? ” it asked. 

“ It turned in-to a pig,” Al-ice said. 

“ I thought it would/’ said the Cat, then once more 
fa-ded out of sight. 

Al-ice wait-ed a while to see if it would come back, 
then walked on in the way in which the March Hare was 
said to live. 

“ I’ve seen Hat-ters,” she said to her-self ; “ so I’ll go to 
see the March Hare.” As she said this, she looked up, and 
there sat the Cat on a branch of a tree. 

“ Did you say pig, or fig ? ” asked the Cat. 

“ I said pig ; and I wish you wouldn’t come and go, all 
at once, like you do ; you make one quite gid-dy.” 

“ All right,” said the Cat ; and this time it faded out in 
such a way that its tail went first, and the last thing Al-ice 


PIG AND PEPPER. 


49 


saw was the grin which stayed some time af-ter the rest of 
it had gone. 

“ Well, I’ve seen a cat with-out a grin,” thought Al-ice ; 
“but a grin with-out a cat! It’s the strang-est thing I 
ev-er saw in all my life ! ” 

She soon came in sight of the house of the March 
Hare ; she thought it must be the right place, as the chim- 
neys were shaped like ears, and the roof was thatched with 
fur. It was so large a house, that she did not like to go too 
near while she was so small ; so she ate a small piece from 
the left-hand bit of mush-room, and raised her-self to two 
feet high. Then she walked up to the house, though with 
some fear lest it should be mad as the Cat had said. 


50 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 




CHAPTER VII. 

A MAD TEA-PARTY. 

There was a ta-ble set out, in the shade of the trees in 
front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hat-ter 
were at tea ; a Dor-mouse sat be-tween them, but it seemed 
to have gone to sleep. 

The ta-ble was a long one, but the three were all 
crowd-ed at one cor-ner of it. “No room! No room!” 
they cried out as soon as they saw Al-ice. “ There's plen-ty 
of room,” she said, and sat down in a large arm-chair at 
one end of the table. 

“ Have some wine,” the March Hare said in a kind 
tone. 

Al-ice looked all round the ta-ble, but there was not a 
thing on it but tea. “ I don’t see the wine,” she said. 

“ There isn’t an-y,” said the March Hare. 

“ Then it wasn’t po-lite of you to ask me to have wine,” 
said Al-ice. 

“ It wasn’t po-lite of you to sit down when no one had 
asked you to have a seat,” said the March Hare. 

“I didn’t know it was your ta-ble,” said Al-ice; “ it’s 
laid for more than three.” 

“ Your hair wants cut-ting,” said the Hat-ter. He had 


A MAD TEA-PARTY. 


51 


looked hard at Al-ice for some time, and this was his first 
speech. 

“ You should learn not to speak to a guest like that,” 
said Al-ice ; “ it is ve-ry rude.” 

The Hat-ter stretched his eyes quite wide at this ; hut 
all he said was, u Why is a rav-en like a desk ? ” 



“ Come, we shall have some fun now,” thought Al-ice. 
“I think I can guess that,” she added out loud. 

“ Do you mean that you think you can find out the 
an-swer to it ? ” asked the March Hare. 

“ I do,” said Al-ice. 

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March 
Hare went on. 

“ I do,” Al-ice said ; “ at least— at least I mean what I 
say— that’s the same thing, you know.” 


52 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


“Not the same thing a bit ! ” said the Hat-ter. “ Why, 
you might just as well say, ‘ I see what I eat ’ is the same 
thing as ‘ I eat what I see ’ ! ” 

“ You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, 
that 4 1 like what I get ’ is the same thing as ‘ I get what I 
like’!” 

“You might just as well say/’ added the Dor-mouse, 
who seemed to be talk-ing in his sleep, “ that ‘ I breathe 
when I sleep ’ is the same thing as 4 1 sleep when I breathe ’ ! ” 

“ It is the same with you,” said the Hat-ter. 

No one spoke for some time, while Al-ice tried to think 
of all she knew of rav-ens and desks, which wasn’t much. 

The Hat-ter was the first to speak. “ What day of the 
month is it ? ” he said, turn-ing to Al-ice. He had his watch 
in his hand, looked at it and shook it now and then while 
he held it to his ear. 

Al-ice thought a-while, and said, “ The fourth.” 

“ Two days wrong ! ” sighed the Hat-ter. “ I told you 
but-ter wouldn’t suit this watch,” he add-ed with a scowl as 
he looked at the March Hare. 

“ It was the best but-ter,” the March Hare said. 

“ Yes, but some crumbs must have got in,” the Hat-ter 
growled; “you shouldn’t have put it in with the bread- 
knife.” 

The March Hare took the watch and looked at it ; then 
dipped it in-to his cup of tea and looked at it a-gain ; but all 
he could think to say was, “ it was the best but-ter, you 
know,” 


A MAD TEA-PARTY. 


53 


“Oh, what a fun-ny watch!” said Al-ice. “It tells the 
day of the month and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is ! ” 

“ Why should it ? ” growled the Hat-ter. 

“ Does your watch tell what year it is ?” 

“ Of course not,” said Al-ice, “ but there’s no need that 
it should, since it stays the same year such a long time.” 

“ Which is just the case with mine,” said the Hat-ter ; 
which seemed to Al-ice to have no sense in it at all. 

“ I don’t quite know what you mean,” she said. 

“ The Dor-mouse has gone to sleep, once more,” said 
the Hat-ter, and he poured some hot tea on the tip of its 
nose. 

The Dor-mouse shook its head, and said with its eyes 
still closed, “ Of course, of course; just what I want-ed to 
say my-self.” 

“Have you guessed the rid-dle yet ?” the Hat-ter asked, 
turn-ing to Al-ice. 

“ No, I give it up,” she said. “ What’s the an-swer ? ” 

“ I do not know at all,” said the Hat-ter. 

“ Nor I,” said the March Hare. 

Al-ice sighed. “ I think you might do bet-ter with the 
time than to waste it, by ask-ing rid-dles that have no 
an-swers.” 

“ If you knew Time as well as I do, you wouldn’t say 
1 waste it .’ It’s Mm.” 

“ I don’t know what you mean,” Al-ice said. 

“ Of course you don’t ! ” said the Hat-ter with a toss of 
his head. “ I dare say you nev-er e-ven spoke to Time.” 


54 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


“May-be not,” she said, “but I know I have to beet 
time when I learn to sing.” 

“ Oh ! that’s it,” said the Hat-ter. “ He won’t stand 
beat-ing. Now if yon kept on good terms with him, 
he would do an-y-thing yon liked with the clock. Say it 
was nine o’clock, just time to go to school ; you’d have 
but to give a hint to Time, and round goes the clock ! 

Half-past one, time for lunch.” 

“ I wish it was,” the March 
Hare said to it-self. 

“ That would be grand, I’m 
sure,” said Al-ice: “but then— I 
shouldn’t be hun-gry for it, you 
know.” 

“Not at first, per-haps, but 
you could keep it to half-past one 
as long as you liked,” said the 
Hat-ter. 

“Is that the way you do?” 
asked Al-ice. 

The Hat-ter shook his head and sighed. “ Not I,” he 
said. “ Time and I fell out last March. It was at the great 
con-cert giv-en by the Queen of Hearts and I had to sing : 

4 Twin-kle, twin-kle, lit-tle bat ! 

How 1 wonder what you’re at ! ’ 



You know the song, per-haps ? 


A MAD TEA-PARTY. 


55 


“ IVe heard some-thing like it,” said Alice. 

“ It goes on, you know,” the Hat-ter said, “ in this way : 

i Up a-bove the world you fly, 

Like a tea-tray in the sky, 

Twin-kle, twin-kle ’ ” 

Here the Dor-mouse shook it-self and sang in its sleep, 

“ twin-kle, twin-kle, twin-kle, twin-kle ” and went on 

so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop. 

“ Well, while I sang the first verse,” the Hat-ter went 
on, “ the Queen bawled out 1 See how he mur-ders the 
time ! Off with his head ! ’ And ev-er since that, he won’t 
do a thing I ask ! It’s al-ways six o’clock now.” 

A bright thought came in-to Al-ice’s head. “ Is that 
why so man-y tea things are put out here ? ” she asked. 

“ Yes, that’s it,” said the Hat-ter with a sigh : “ it’s al- 
ways tea-time, and we’ve no time to wash the things.” 

“ Then you keep mov-ing round, I guess,” said Al-ice. 

“Just so,” said the Hat-ter; “as the things get used 

up.” 

“ But when you come to the place where you started, 
what do you do then ? ” Al-ice dared to ask. 

“ I’m tired of this,” yawned the March Hare. “ I vote 
you tell us a tale.” 

“ I fear I don’t know one,” said Al-ice. 

“ I want a clean cup,” spoke up the Hat-ter. 

He moved on as he spoke, and the Dor-mouse moved 
in-to his place ; the March Hare moved in-to the Dor- 


56 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


mouse’s place and Al-ice, none too well pleased, took the 
place of the March Hare. The Hat-ter was the on-ly one 
to get an-y good from the change ; and Al-ice was a good x 
deal worse off, as the March Hare had up-set the milk- jug 
in-to his plate. 

“ Now, for your sto-ry,” the March Hare said to Al-ice. 

“ I’m sure I don’t know ” — Alice be-gan, “ I — I don’t 

think — ” 

“ Then yon shouldn’t 
talk,” said the Hat-ter. 

This was more than 
Al-ice could stand ; so 
she got up and walked 
off, and though she 
looked back once or 
twice and half hoped 
they would call af-ter 
her, they didn’t seem to 
know that she was 
gone. The last time 
she saw them, they were trying to put the poor Dor-mouse 
head first in-to the tea-pot. 

“ Well, I’ll not go there a-gain,” said Al-ice as she picked 
her way through the wood. “ It’s the dull-est tea-par-ty I 
was ev-er at in all my life.” 

As Al-ice said this, she saw that one of the trees had a 
door that led right in-to it. “ That’s strange ! ” she thought ; 

“ but I hayen’t seen a thing to-day that isn’t strange. 



A MAD TEA-PARTY. 


57 


I think I may as well go in at once.” And in she 
went. 

Once more she found her-self in a long hall, and close 
to the lit-tle glass stand. She took up the lit-tle key and 
un-locked the door that led to the gar-den. Then she set 
to work to eat some of the mush-room which she still had 
with her. When she was a-bout a foot high, she went 
through the door and walked down the lit-tle hall ; then — 
she found herself, at last, in the love-Iy garden, where she 
had seen the bright blooms and the cool foun-tains. 


58 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND, 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE QUEEN’S CRO-QUET GROUND. 

A large rose tree stood near the gar-den gate. The 
blooms on it were white, but three men who seemed to be 
in great haste were paint-ing them red. Al-ice thought 
this a strange thing to do, so she went near-er to watch 
them. Just as she came up to them, she heard one of them 
say, “ Look out now, Five ! Don’t splash paint on me like 
that ! ” 

“ I couldn’t help it,” said Five, “ Six knocked my arm.” 

On which Six looked up and said, “ That’s right, Five ! 
Don’t fail to lay the blame on some one else.” 

“ You needn’t talk,” said Five. “ I heard the Queen 
say your head must come off.” 

“ What for ? ” asked the one who spoke first. 

“ What is that to you, Two ? ” said Six. 

“ It is much to him and I’ll tell him,” said Five. “ He 
brought the cook tu-lip roots for on-ions.” 

Six flung down the brush and said, “Well, of all the 

wrong things ” Just then his eyes chanced to fall on 

Al-ice, who stood and watched them, and he checked him- 
self at once ; Five and Two looked round al-so, and all of 
them bowed low. 


THE QUEEN’S CROQUET GROUND. 


59 


“Would you tell me, please/’ said Al-ice, “why you 
paint those ros-es ? ” 

Five and Six did not speak, but looked at Two, who 
said in a low voice, “ Why, the fact is, you see, Miss, this 
here ought to have been a red rose tree, and by mis-take a 
white one was put in, and if the Queen was to find it out, 
we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So you 
see, Miss, we are hard at work 
to get it paint-ed, so that she 

may not ” Just then Five, 

who had stood and watched the 
gate for some time, called out, 

“ The Queen ! the Queen ! ” and 
the three men at once threw 
tliem-selves flat up-on their fa- 
ces. Al-ice heard the tramp of WjE 
feet and looked round, glad if 
at last she could see the Queen. 

First came ten sol-diers with 
clubs ; these were all shaped 
like the three men at the rose 
tree, long and flat like cards, with their hands and feet at 
the cor-ners ; next came ten men who were trimmed with 
di-a-monds and walked two and two like the sol-diers. 
The ten chil-dren of the King and Queen came next ; and 
the little dears came with a skip and a jump hand in 
hand by twos. They were trimmed with hearts. 

Next came the guests, most of whom were Kings and 



60 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND 


Queens. Al-ice saw the White Rab-bit, with them. He did 
not seem at ease though he smiled at all that was said. 
He didn’t see Al-ice as he went by. Then came the Knave 



of Hearts with the King’s crown on a red vel-vet cush-ion ; 
and last of all came The King and Queen of Hearts. 

At first Al-ice thought it might be right for her to lie 
down on her face like the three men at the rose tree, “ but 
what would be the use of such a fine show,” she thought, 


THE QUEEN’S CROQUET GROUND. 61 

“ if all had to lie down so that they couldn’t see it ? ” So she 
stood where she was and wait-ed. 

When they came to where she stood, they all stopped 
and looked at her, and the Queen said in a stern voice, 
“Who is this?” She spoke to the Knave of Hearts, who 
bowed and smiled but did not speak. 

“ Fool ! ” said the Queen with a toss of her head ; then 
she turned to Al-ice and asked, “ What’s your name, child ? ” 

“My name is Al-ice, so please your ma-jes-ty,” said 
Al-ice, but she thought to her-self, “Why they’re a mere 
pack of cards. I need have no fears of them.” 

“ And who are these? ” asked the Queen, as she point-ed 
to the three men who still lay round the rose tree ; for 
you see as they all lay on their faces and their backs 
were the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell 
who they were. 

“ How should I know ? ” said Al-ice, and thought it 
strange that she should speak to a Queen in that way. 

The Queen turned red with rage, glared at her for a 
mo-ment like a wild beast, then screamed, “ Off with her 
head ! Off ” 

“ Non-sense ! ” said Al-ice, in a loud, firm voice, and the 
Queen said no more. 

The King laid his hand on the Queen’s arm and said. 
“ Think, my dear, she is but a child ! ” 

The Queen turned from him with a scowl and said to 
the Knave, “ Turn them o-ver ! ” 

The Knave did so, with one foot. 


62 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


“Get up!” said the Queen in a shrill loud voice, and 
the three men jumped up, at once, and bowed to the King, 
and Queen and to the whole crowd. 

“ Leave off that ! ” screamed the Queen ; “ you make 
me gid-dy.” Then she turned to the rose tree and asked, 
“ What have you been do-ing here ?” 

“May it please your ma-jes-ty,” said Two, and went 
down on one knee as he spoke, “ we were try-ing ” 

“ I see ! ” said the Queen, who in the mean time had 
seen that some of the ros-es were paint-ed red and some 
were still white. “ Off with their heads ! ” and the crowd 
moved on, while three of the sol-diers stayed to cut off the 
heads of the poor men, who ran to Al-ice for help. 

“ They shan’t hurt you,” she said, as she hid them in 
a large flow-er pot that stood near. The three sol-diers 
walked round and looked for them a short while, then 
marched off. 

“ Are their heads off ? ” shout-ed the Queen. 

“Their heads are gone, if it please your ma-jes-ty,” the 
sol-diers shouted back. 

“ That’s right ! ” shouted the Queen. “ Can you play 
cro-quet ? ” she asked Al-ice. 

“ Yes,” shouted Al-ice. 

“ Come on then ! ” roared the Queen, and Al-ice went 
on with them. 

“It’s — it’s a fine day !” said a weak voice at her side. 
It was the White Rab-bit who peeped up in-to her face. 

“ Yes,” said Al-ice : “ where’s the Duch-ess ? ” 


THE QUEEN’S CROQUET GROUND. 


63 


“ Hush ! Hush ! ” said the Rab-bit, in a low tone. He 
looked back as he spoke, then raised up on tip-toe, put his 
mouth close to her ear and whis-pered, “ She’s to have her 
head cut off.” 

“ What for ? ” asked Al-ice. 

“ Did you say, ‘ What a pit-y ! ’ ? ” the Rab-bit asked. 

“ No, I didn’t,” said Al-ice : 
pit-y. I said ‘ What for ? ’ ” 

“ She boxed the Queen’s ears 
— ” the Rab-bit be-gan. Al-ice 
gave a lit-tle scream of joy. 

“ Oh, hush ! ” the Rab-bit 
whis-pered in a great fright. 

“ The Queen will hear you ! 

You see she came late, and the 
Queen said ” 

“ Each one to his place ! ” 
shout-ed the Queen in a loud 
voice, and peo-ple ran this way 
and that in great haste and 
soon each one had found his place, and the game be-gan. 

Al-ice thought she had nev-er seen such a strange cro- 
quet ground in all her life : it was all ridges ; the balls were 
live hedge-hogs ; the mal-lets were live birds, and the sol- 
diers bent down and stood on their hands and feet to make 
the arch-es. 

At first Al-ice found it hard to use a live bird for a 
mal-let. It was a large bird with a long neck and long 




64 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


legs. She tucked it un-der her arm with its legs down, but 
just as she got its neck straight and thought now she could 
give the ball a good blow with its head, the bird would 
twist its neck round and give her such a queer look, that 
she could not help laugh-ing ; and by the time she had got 
its head down a-gain, she found that the hedge-hog had 
crawled off. Then too there was al-ways a ridge or a 
hole in the way of where she want-ed to send her ball; 
and she couldn’t find an arch in its place, for the men 
would get up and walk off when it pleased them. Al-ice 
soon made up her mind that it was a ve-ry hard game to 
play. 

The Queen -was soon in a great rage, and stamped 
a-bout, shout-ing “ Off with his head ! ” or “ Off with her 
head ! ” with each breath. 

Al-ice felt quite ill at ease ; to be sure, she had not as 
yet had cause to feel the wrath of the Queen, but she knew 
not how soon it might be her turn ; “ and then,” she 
thought, “ what shall I do ?” 

As she was look-ing round for some way to get off with- 
out be-ing seen, she saw a strange thing in the air, which 
she at last made out to be a grin, and she said to her-self, 
“It’s the Cat ; now I shall have some one to talk to.” 

“ How do you do ? ” said the Cat as soon as its whole 
mouth came out. 

Al-ice wait-ed till she saw the eyes, then nod-ded. “ It’s 
no use to speak to it till its ears have come, or at least one 
of them.” In a short time the whole head came in view, 


THE QUEEN’S CROQUET GROUND. 65 

then she put down her bird and told him of the game; 
glad that she had some one that was pleased to hear 
her talk. 

“ I don’t think they are at all fair in the game,” said 
Al-ice with a scowl ; “ and they all talk so loud that one 
can’t hear one’s self speak — and they don’t have rules to 
play by ; at least if they have, they don’t mind them — and 
you don’t know how bad it is to have to use live things to 
play with. The arch I have to go through next walked off 
just now to the far end of the ground — and I should have 
struck the Queen’s hedge-hog, but it ran off when it saw 
that mine was near ! ” 

“ How do you like the Queen ? ” asked the Cat in a low 
voice. 

“ Not at all,” said Al-ice, “ she’s so ” Just then she 

saw that the Queen was be-hind her and heard what she 
said ; so she went on, “ sure to win that it’s not worth 
while to go on with the game.” 

The Queen smiled and passed on. 

“ Who are you talk-ing to? ” said the King, as he came 
up to Al-ice and stared at the Cat’s head as if it were a 
strange sight. 

“ It’s a friend of mine — a Che-shire Cat,” said Al-ice. 

“ I don’t like the look of it at all,” said the King ; “ it 
may kiss my hand if it likes.” 

“ I don’t want to,” said the Cat. 

“ Don’t be rude ; and don’t look at me like that,” said 
the King. 


66 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


“ A cat may look at a king,” said Al-ice. “ I’ve read 
that in some book, but I can’t tell where.” 

“ Well, it must get off from here,” said the King in a 
firm voice, and he called to the Queen, who was near, “ My 
dear ! I wish you would see that this cat leaves here at 
once ! ” 

The Queen had but one cure for all ills, great or small. 
“ Off with his head,” she said, and did not so much as look 
round. 

“ I'll fetch the sol-dier my-self,” said the King, and 
rushed off. 

Al-ice thought she might as well go back, and see how 
the game went on. She heard the Queen’s voice in the dis- 
tance, as she screamed with rage, “ Off with his head ! 
He has missed his turn ! ” Al-ice did not like the look of 
things at all, for the game was so mixed she could not tell 
when her turn came ; so she went off to find her hedge-hog. 

She came up with two hedge-hogs in a fierce fight, and 
thought now was a good time to strike one of them, but 
her mal-let was gone to the oth-er side of the ground, and 
she saw it in a weak sort of way as it tried to fly up in-to a 
tree. 

By the time she had caught the bird and brought it 
back, the fight was o-ver, and both hedge-hogs were out of 
sight. “ I don’t care much,” thought Al-ice, “ for there is 
not an arch on this side the ground.” So she went back 
to have some more talk with her friend. 

When she reached the place, she found quite a crowd 


THE QUEEN’S CROQUET GROUND. 67 

round the Cat. The King and the Queen and the sol-dier 
who had come with the axe, to cut off the Cat’s head, were 
all talking at once, while all the rest stood with closed lips 
and looked quite grave. 

As Koon as they saw Al-ice, they want-ed her to say 
which one was right, 
but as all three spoke 
at once, she found it 
hard to make out 
what they said. 

The sol-dier said 
that you couldn’t cut 
off a head unless 
there was a bod-y to 
cut it off from; that 
he had nev-er had to 
do such a thing, and 
he wouldn’t be-gin it 
now, at his time of 
life. 

The King said 
that all heads could 
be cut off, and that you weren’t to talk non-sense. 

The Queen said, if something wasn’t done in less than 
no time, heads should come off all round. (It was this last 
threat that had made the whole crowd look so grave as 
Al-ice came up.) 



68 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


Al-ice could think of noth-ing else to say but, “ Ask the 
Duch-ess, it is her Cat.” 

“ Fetch her here,” the Queen said to the sol-dier, and 
he went off like an ar-row. 

The Cat’s head start-ed to fade out of sight as soon as 
he was gone, and by the time he had come back with 
the Duch-ess, it could not be seen at all ; so the King and 
the man ran up and down look-ing for it, while the rest 
went back to the game. 


THE MOCK TURTLE. 


69 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE MOCK TUR-TLE. 

“ You can’t think how glad I am to see you once more, 
you dear old thing ! ” said the Duch-ess as she took Al-ice’s 
arm, and they walked off side by side. 

Al-ice was glad to see her in such a fine mood, and 
thought to her-self that the Duch-ess might not be so bad 
as she had seemed to be when they first met. 

Then Al-ice fell in-to a long train of thought as to what 
she would do if she were a Duch-ess. 

She quite lost sight of the Duch-ess by her side, and 
was star-tied when she heard her voice close to her ear. 

“ You have some-thing on your mind, my dear, and 
that makes you for-get to talk. I can’t tell you just now 
what the mor-al of that is, but I shall think of it in a bit.” 

“ Are you sure it has one ?” asked Al-ice. 

“ Tut, tut, child ! ” said the Duch-ess ; “ all things have 
a mor-al if you can but find it.” And she squeezed up 
close to Al-ice’s side as she spoke. 

Al-ice did not much like to have the Duch-ess keep so 
close, but she didn’t like to be rude, so she bore it as well as 
she could. 


To 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


“ The game is not so bad now,” Al-ice said, think-ing 
she ought to fill in the time with talk of some kind. 

“ ’Tis so,” said the Duch-ess, “ and the mor-al of that 
is — ‘ Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, that makes the world go round ! ’ ” 
“ Some one said, it’s done by each one mind-ing his own 
work,” said Al-ice. 

“ Ah ! well, it means much the same thing,” said the 
Duch-ess, then add-ed, “and 
the mor-al of that is — ‘Take 
care of the sense and the 
sounds will take care of them- 
selves.’ ” 

“How she likes to find 
mor-als in thihgs,” said Al-ice. 

“ Why don’t you talk 
more and not think so long ? ” 
asked the Duch-ess. 

“ I’ve a right to think,” 
said Al-ice in a sharp tone, for 
she was tired and vexed. 

“ Just as much right,” 
said the Duch-ess, “as pigs 
have to fly ; and the mor ” 

But here the voice of the Duch-ess died out in the midst 
of her pet word, “ mor-al,” and Al-ice felt the arm that was 
linked in hers shake as if with fright. Al-ice looked up 
and there stood the Queen in front of them with her arms 
fold-ed, and a dark frown up-on her face. 



THE MOCK TURTLE. 


71 


“ A fine day, your ma-jes-ty ! ” the Duch-ess be-gan in a 
weak voice. 

“ Now, I warn you in time,” shout-edthe Queen, with a 
stamp on the ground as she spoke ; “ ei-ther you or your 
head must be off, and that in a-bout half no time ! Take 
your choice ! ” 

The Duch-ess took her choice and was gone in a mo- 
ment. 

“ Let’s go on with the game,” the Queen said to Al-ice ; 
and Al-ice was in too great a fright to speak, but went 
with her, back to the cro-quet ground. 

The guests had all sat down in the shade to rest while 
the Queen was a- way, but as soon as they saw her they 
rushed back to the game ; while the Queen said if they were 
not in their pla-ces at once, it would cost them their lives. 

All the time the game went on the Queen kept shout- 
ing, “ Off with his head ! ” or “ Off with her head ! ” so that 
by the end of half an hour there was no one left on the 
grounds but the King, the Queen, and Al-ice. 

Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said 
to Al-ice, “ Have you seen the Mock Tur-tle yet ?” 

“ No,” said Al-ice, “ I don’t know what a Mock-tur-tle is.” 

“ It is a thing Mock Tur-tle Soup is made from,” the 
Queen said. 

“ I’ve nev-er seen or heard of one,” Alice said. 

“ Come on then, and he shall tell you his sto-ry,” said 
the Queen. 

As they walked off, Al-ice heard the King say in a low 


72 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


tone to those whom the Queen had doomed to death, “ You 
may all go free ! ” “ Come, that’s a good thing,” thought 
Al-ice, for she felt ver-y sad that all those men must have 
their heads cut off. 

They soon came to where a Gry-phon lay fast a-sleep in 
the sun. (If you don’t know what it is like, look at the pic- 
ture.) “ Up, dull 
thing ! ” said 
the Queen, 
and take this 
young la-dy to 
see the Mock 
Tur-tle. I must 
go back now ; ” 
and she walked 
a- way and left 
Al-ice with 
the Gry-phon. 
Al-ice was by no means pleased with its looks, but she 
thought she would be quite as safe with it as she would 
be with the Queen ; so she wait-ed. 

The Gry-phon sat up and rubbed its eyes ; then watched 
the Queen till she was out of sight; then it laughed. 
“ What fun ! ” it said, half to it-self, half to Alice. 

“ What is the fun ?” she asked. 

“ Why, she” it said. “ It’s all a whim of hers ; they 
nev-er cut off those heads, you know. Come on.” 

Soon they saw the Mock Tur-tle sit-ting sad and lone on 



THE MOCK TURTLE. 


73 


a ledge of rock, and as they came near, Al-ice could hear 
him sigh as if his heart would break. “ What makes him 
so sad ? ” Al-ice asked. 

“ It’s all a whim of his,” said the Gry-phon ; “ he hasn’t 
got no grief, you know. Come on ! ” 



So they went up to the Mock Tur-tle, who looked at 
them with large eyes full of tears, but did not speak. 

“ This here young la-dy,” said the Gry-phon, “ she wants 
for to know a-bout your past life, she do.” 



74 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


“ I’ll tell it to her,” said the Mock Tur-tle in a deep, sad 
tone : “ sit down both of you and don’t speak a word till I 
get through.” 

So they sat down, and no one spoke for some 
time. 

“ Once,” said the Mock Tur-tle at last, with a deep sigh, 
“ I was a re-al Tur-tle. When we were young we went to 
school in the sea. We were taught by an old Tur-tle — we 
used to call him Tor-toise ” 

“ Why did you call him Tor-toise, if he wasn’t one ? ” 
Al-ice asked. 

“ He taught us, that’s why,” said the Mock Tur-tle : 
u you are quite dull not to know that ! ” 

“ Shame on you to ask such a sim-ple thing,” add-ed the 
Gry-phon ; then they both sat and looked at poor Al-ice, 
who felt as if she could sink into the earth. 

At last the Gry-phon said to the Mock Tur-tle, “ Drive 
on, old fellow ! Don’t be all day a-bout it ! ” and he went on 
in these words : 

“ Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn’t 
think it’s true ” 

“ I didn’t say I did not ! ” said Al-ice. 

“ You did,” said the Mock Tur-tle. 

“ Hold your tongue,” add-ed the Gry-phon. 

The Mock Tur-tle went on : 

“We were well taught— in fact we went to school each 
day ” 


THE MOCK TURTLE. 


75 


“ I’ve been to a clay school too,” said Alice ; “ you 
needn’t be so proud as all that.” 

“Were you taught /wash-ing?” asked the Mock 
Tur-tle. 

“ Of course not,” said Al-ice. 

“ Ah ! then yours wasn’t a good school,” said the Mock 
Tur-tle. “Now at ours they had at the end of the bill, 
1 French, mu-sic, and wash-ing — ex-tra.’ ” 

“ You couldn’t have need-ed it much in the sea,” said 
Al-ice. 

“ I didn’t learn it,” said the Mock Tur-tle, with a sigh. 
“ I just took the first course.” 

“ What was that ? ” asked Al-ice. 

“ Reel-ing and Writh-ing, of course, at first,” the Mock 
Tur-tle said. “ An old eel used to come once a week. He 
taught us to drawl, to stretch and to faint in coils.” 

“ What was that like ? ” Al-ice asked. 

“ Well, I can’t show you, my-self,” he said: “I’m too 
stiff. And the Gry-phon didn’t learn it.” 

“ How man-y hours a day did you do les-sons ? ” asked 
Al-ice. 

“ Ten hours the first day,” said the Mock Tur-tle ; “ nine 
the next and so on.” 

“ What a strange plan ! ” said Al-ice. 

“ That’s why they’re called les-sons,” said the Gry- 
phon : “ they les-sen from day to day.” 

This was such a new thing to Al-ice that she sat still a 


76 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


good while and didn’t speak. “ Then there would be a day 
when you would have no school,” she said. 

“ Of course there would,” said the Mock Tur-tle. 

“ What did you do then ? ” asked Al-ice. 

“ I’m tired of this,” said the Gry-phon : “ tell her now of 
the games we played.” 


THE LOBSTER DANCE. 


77 


CHAPTER X. 

THE LOB-STER DANCE. 

The Mock Tur-tle sighed, looked at Al-ice and tried to 
speak, but for a min-ute or two sobs choked his voice. 
“ Same as if he had a 
bone in his throat,” 
said the Gry-phon, 
and set to work to 
shake him and punch 
him in the back. At 
last the Mock Tur-tle 
found his voice and 
with tears run-ning 
down his cheeks, he 
went on : 

“You may not 
have lived much in 
the sea ” (“ I have- 

n’t,” said Al-ice) “so 
you can not know 
what a fine thing a Lob-ster Dance is!” 

“No,” said Al-ice. “What sort of a dance is it?” 

“ Why,” said the Gry-phon, “ you first form in a line 
on the sea-shore ” 



78 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


“ Two lines ! ” cried the Mock Tur-tle. “ Seals, tur-tles, 
and so on ; then when you’ve cleared all the small fish out 
of the way ” 

“ That takes some time,” put in the Gry-phon. 

“ You move to the front twice ” 

“ Each with a lob-ster by his side ! ” cried the Gry-phon. 

“ Of course,” the Mock Tur-tle said : “ move to the front 
twice ” 

“ Change and come back in same way,” said the Gry- 
phon. 

“ Then, you know,” the Mock Tur-tle w T ent on, “ you 
throw t|ie ” 

“ The lob-sters!” shout-ed the Gry-phon, with a bound 
in-to the air. 

“ As far out to sea as you can ” 

“ Swim out for them,” screamed the Gry-phon. 

“ Turn heels o-ver head in the sea ! ” cried the Mock 
Tur-tle. 

“ Change a-gain ! ” yelled the Gry-phon at the top of his 
voice. 

“ Then back to land, and— that’s all the first part,” 
said the Mock Tur-tle. 

Both the Gry-phon and the Mock Tur-tle had jumped 
a-bout like mad things all this time. Now they sat down 
quite sad and still, and looked at Al-ice. 

“ It must be a pret-ty dance,” said Al-ice. 

“ Would you like to see some of it ?” asked the Mock 
Tur-tle, 


THE LOBSTER DANCE. 


79 


“ Oh, yes,” she said. 

“ Come, let’s try the first part !” said the Mock Tur-tle 
to the Gry-phon. “ We can do it without lob-sters, you 
know. Which shall sing ? ” 

“ Oh, you sing,” said the Gry-phon. “ I don’t know the 
words.” 

So they danced round and round Al-ice, now and then 
tread-ing on her toes when they passed too close. They 
waved their fore paws to mark the time, while the Mock 
Tur-tle sang a queer kind of song, each verse of which 
end-ed with these words : 

“ 1 Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you 
join the dance ? 

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you 
join the dance ? ’ ” 

“ Thank you, it’s a fine dance to watch,” said Al-ice, 
glad that it was o-ver at last. 

“ Now,” said the Gry-phon, “ tell us a-bout what you 
have seen and done in your life.” 

“ I could tell you of the strange things I have seen to- 
day,” said Al-ice, with some doubt as to their wish-ing to 
hear it. 

“ All right, go on,” they both cried. 

So Al-ice told them what she had been through that 
day, from the time when she first saw the White Rab-bit. 
They came up quite close to her, one on each side, and sat 
still till she got to the part where she tried to say, “ You 


80 ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 

are old, Fath-er Wil-liam,” and the words all came s wrong. 
Then the Mock Tur-tle drew a long breath and said, “ That’s 
quite strange ! ” 

“ It’s all as strange as it can be,” said the Gry-phon. 

“ It all came wrong ! ” the Mock Tur-tle said, while he 
seemed to be in deep thought. “ I should like to hear her 

try to say some-thing now. Tell 
her to be-gin.” He looked at 
the Gry-phon as if he thought 
it had the right to make Al-ice 
do as it pleased. 

“ Stand up and say, ‘ ’Tis 
the voice of the Slug-gard,’ ” 
said the Gry-phon. 

“How they do try to make 
one do things ! ” thought Al-ice. 
“ I might just as well be at 
school at once.” She stood 
up and tried to re-peat it, but 
her head was so full of the Lob- 
ster Dance, that she didn’t 
know what she was say-ing, 
ver-y queer, in-deed : 

“ ’Tis the voice of the lob-ster ; I heard him de-clare, 

‘ You have baked me too brown, I must su-gar my hair.’ 
As a duck with its eye-lids, so he with his nose 
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.” 



and the words all came 


THE LOBSTER DANCE. 


81 


“ That's not the way I used to say it when I was a 
child,” said the Gry-phon. 

“ Well, I never heard it before,” said the Mock Tur-tle, 
“but there’s no sense in it at all.” 

Al-ice did not speak ; she sat down with her face in 
her hands, and thought, “ Will things nev-er be as they used 
to an-y more ? ” 

“ I should like you to tell what it means,” said the 
Mock Tur-tle. 

“ She can’t do that,” said the Gry-phon. “ Go on with 
the next verse.” 

“ But his toes ? ” the Mock Tur-tle went on. “ How 
could he turn them out with his nose, you know ? ” 

“ Go on with the next verse,” the Gry-phon said once 
more ; “ it begins 4 1 passed by his gar-den.’” 

Al-ice thought she must do as she was told, though 
she felt sure it would all come wrong, and she went 
on : 

“I passed by his gar-den and marked with one eye, 
How the owl and the oys-ter were shar-ing the pie.” 

“What is the use of say-ing all that stuff?” the Mock 
' Tur-tle broke in, 44 if you don’t tell what it means as you 
go on ? I tell you it is all non-sense.” 

“Yes, I think you might as well leave off,” said the 
Gry-phon, and Al-ice was but too glad to do so. 

44 Shall we try the Lob-ster dance once more?” the 


B2 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


Gry-phon went on, “ or would you like the Mock Tur-tle to 
sing you a song ? ” 

“ Oh, a song please, if the Mock Tur-tle would be so 
kind,” Al-ice said with so much zest that the Gry-phon threw 
back his head and said, “ Hm ! Well, each one to his own 
taste. Sing her ‘ Tur-tle Soup,’ will you, old fel-low ? ” 

The Mock Tur-tle heaved a deep sigh, and in a voice 
choked with sobs, be-gan his song, but just then the cry of 
“ The tri-al is on ! ” was heard a long way off. 

“ Come on,” cried the Gry-phon. He took her by the 
hand, ran off, and did not wait to hear the song. 

“ What trial is it ? ” Al-ice pant-ed as she ran, but the 
Gry-phon on-ly said, “ Come on ! ” and still ran as fast as he 
could. 


WHO STOLE THE TARTS? 


83 


CHAPTER XI. 

WHO STOLE THE TARTS? 

The King and Queen of Hearts were seat-ed on their 
throne when Al-ice and the Gry-phon came up, with a 
great crowd a-bout them, There were all sorts of small 
birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards. The 
Knave stood in front of them in chains, with a sol-dier 
on each side to guard him; and near the King was the 
White Rab-bit, with a trum-pet in one hand and a roll of 
pa-per in the other. In the mid-dle of the court was a ta-ble 
with a large dish of tarts on it. They looked so good that 
it made Al-ice feel as if she would like to eat some of them. 
“I wish they’d get the tri-al done,” she thought, “and hand 
round the pies ! ” But there seemed no chance of this, so to 
pass the time a- way she looked round at the strange things 
a-bout her. 

This was the first time Al-ice had been in a court of this 
kind, and she was quite pleased to find that she knew the 
names of most things she saw there. “ That’s the judge,” 
she thought, “ I know him by his great wig.” 

The judge, by the way, was the King, and as he wore 
his crown on top of his wig, he looked quite ill at ease. 

“ And that’s the ju-ry box,” thought Al-ice, “ and those 


84 


ALICE IK WONDERLAND. 


twelve things ” (she had to say “ things,” you see, for some 
of them were beasts and some were birds), “ I guess are the 
ju-rors.” She said this last word two or three times as she 
was proud that she knew it ; for she was right when she 
thought that few girls of her age would have known what 
it all meant. 

The twelve ju-rors all wrote on slates. 

“ What can they have to write now ? ” Al-ice asked the 
Gry-phon, in a low tone. “ The tri-al has not be-gun yet.” 

“ They’re put-ting down their names,” the Gry-phon 
said, “ for fear they should for-get them.” 

“ Stu-pid things ! ” Al-ice said in a loud voice, but 
stopped at once, for the White Rab-bit cried out, “ Si-lence in 
court ! ” and the King looked round to make out who spoke. 

Al-ice could see quite well that the ju-rors all wrote 
down “ stu-pid things!” on their slates, she could e-ven 
make out that one of them didn’t know how to spell “ stu- 
pid ” and that he asked the one by his side to tell him. “ A 
nice mud-dle their slates will be in by the time the tri-al’s 
ended,” thought Al-ice. 

One of the ju-rors had a pen-cil that squeaked as he 
wrote. This, of course, Al-ice could not stand, so she went 
round near him, and soon found a chance to get it from 
him. This she did in such a way that the poor ju-ror (it 
was Bill, the Liz-ard) could not make out at all where it 
was, so he wrote with one fin-ger for the rest of the day. 
Of course, this was of no use, as it left no mark on the slate. 
“ Read the charge ! ” said the King. 


WHO STOLE THE TARTS? 


85 


On this the White Rab-bit blew three blasts on the 
tram-pet, and then from the pa-per in his hand read : 

“ The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, 

All on a sum-mer day : 

The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, 

And took them quite a- way ! ” 

“ The ju-ry will now take the case,” said the King. 

“Not yet, not yet ! ” the 
Rab-bit said in haste. “There 
is a great deal else to come first.” 

“ Call the first wit-ness,” 
said the King, and the White 
Rab-bit blew three blasts on the 
trum-pet, and called out, “ First 
wit-ness.” 

The first to come was the 
Hat-ter. He came in with a tea 
cup in one hand and a piece of 
bread and but-ter in the oth-er. 

“I beg par-don, your ma- 
jes-ty,” he said, “ but I had to 
'bring these in, as I was not quite through with my tea 
when I was sent for.” 

“You ought to have been through,” said the King. 
“ When did you be-gin ? ” 

The Hat-ter looked at the March Hare, who had just 



86 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


come in-to court, arm in arm with the Dor-mouse. “ Fourth 
of March, I think it was,” he said. 

“ Fifth,” said the March Hare. 

“ Sixth,” add-ed the Dor-mouse. 

“ Write that down,” said the King to the ju-ry, and they 
wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added 
them up and changed the sum to shil-lings and pence. 

“ Take off your hat,” the King said to the Hat-ter. 

“It isn’t mine,” said the Hat-ter. 

“ Stole it ! ” cried the King, as he turned to the jury, 
who at once wrote it down. 

“ I keep them to sell,” the Hat-ter added. “ I’ve none 
of my own. I’m a hat-ter.” 

Here the Queen put on her eye-glass-es and stared hard 
at the Hat-ter, who turned pale with fright. 

“Tell what you know of this case,” said the King; 
“ and don’t be nerv-ous, or I’ll have your head off on the 
spot.” 

This did not seem to calm him at all, he shift-ed from 
one foot to the other and looked at the Queen, and in his 
fright he bit a large piece out of his tea-cup in place of the 
bread and but-ter. 

Just then Al-ice felt a strange thrill, tne cause of which 
she could not make out till she saw she had be-gun to 
grow a-gain. 

“ I wish you wouldn’t squeeze so,” said the Dor-mouse. 
“ I haven’t room to breathe.” 

“ I can’t help it,” said Al-ice ; “ I’m grow-ing.” 


WHO STOLE THE TARTS? 


87 


“ YouVe no right to grow here,’ 1 said the Dor-mouse. 

“ Don’t talk such non-sense,” said Al-ice. “ You know 
you grow too/’ 

“Yes, but not so fast as to squeeze the breath out 
of those who sit by me.” He got up and crossed to the 
oth-er side of the court. 

All this time the Queen had not left off star-ing at the 
Hat-ter, and just as the Dor-mouse crossed the court, she 
said to one of the men, “ Bring me 
the list of those who sang in the 
last con-cert,” on which the poor 
Hat-ter trembled so, that he shook 
both his shoes off. 

“ Tell what you know of this 
case,” the King called out a-gain, 

“ or I’ll have your head off, if 
you do shake.” 

“I’m a poor man, your ma- 
jes-ty,” the Hat-ter be-gan in a weak 
voice, “ and I hadn’t but just be-gun 
my tea, not more than a week or so, and what with the 
bread and but-ter so thin — and the twink-ling of the tea ” 

“ The twink-ling of what?” asked the King. 

“It be-gan with the tea,” the Hat-ter said. 

“ Of course twink-ling be-gins with a T ! ” said the 
King. “ Do you take me for a dunce ? Go on ! ” 

“ I’m a poor man,” the Hat-ter went on, “ and most 
things twink-led af-ter that — but the March Hare said — 



88 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND 


“ I didn’t,” said the March Hare in great haste. 

“ Yon did,” said the Hat-ter. 

“I de-ny it,” said the March Hare. 

“ He de-nies it,” said the King : “ leave out that part.” 

“Well, I’m sure the Dor-mouse said ’’the Hat-ter 

went on, with a look at the Dor-mouse to see if he would 
de-ny it too, hut he was fast a-sleep. 

“ Then I cut some more bread and ” 

“But what did the Dor-mouse say ?” asked one of the 
ju-ry. 

“ That I can’t tell,” said the Hat-ter. 

“You must tell or I’ll have your head off,” said the 
King. 

The wretch-ed Hat-ter dropped his cup and bread, and 
went down on one knee. 

“ I’m a poor man,” he be-gan. 

“ You’re a poor speak-er,” said the King. 

Here one of the guin-ea pigs cheered, and one of the 
men seized him, thrust him in-to a bag which tied up with 
strings, and then sat up-on it. 

“If that’s all you know, you may stand down,” the 
King said. 

“ I’m as low as I can get now,” said the Hat-ter ; “ I’m 
on the floor as it is.” 

“ Then you may sit down,” the King said. 

“ I’d like to get through with my tea first,” said the 
Hat-ter with a look at the Queen who still read the list in 
her hand. 


l. OF C. 


WHO STOLE THE TARTS? 


89 


“ You may go,” said the King, and the Hat-ter left the 
court in such haste that he did not e-yen wait to put his 
shoes on. 

“ And just take his head off out-side,” the Queen add-ed 
to one of the sol-diers, but the Hat-ter was out of sight 
be-f ore the man could get to the door. 

“ Call the next wit-ness,” said the King. 

The next to come was the Duch-ess’ cook, and Al- 
ice guessed who it was by the way the peo-ple near the 
door sneezed all at once. 

“ Tell what you know 
of this case,” said the King. 

“ Shan’t,” said the cook. 

The King looked at the 
White Rab-bit, who said in 
a low voice, “Your ma- 
jesty must make her tell.” 

“Well, if I must, I 
must,” said the King with 
a sad look. He fold-ed his arms and frowned at the cook 
till his eyes were al-most out of sight, then asked in a 
stern voice, “ What are tarts made of ?” 

“ Pep-per, most-ly,” said the cook. 

“ Sug-ar,” said a weak voice near her. 

“ Catch that Dor-mouse,” the Queen shrieked out. “ Off 
with his head ! Turn him out of court ! Pinch him ! Off 
with his head ! ” 

The whole court ran here and there, get-ting the Dor- 



90 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


mouse turned out, and by the time this was done, the cook 
had gone. 

“ That’s all right,” said the King, as if he were glad to 
be rid of her. “Call the next,” and he add-ed in a low 
tone to the Queen, “ Now, my dear, you must take the next 
wit ness in hand ; it quite makes my head ache ! ” 

Al-ice watched the White Rab-bit as Re looked o-ver 
the list. She thought to her-self, “ I want to see what the 
next witness will be like, for they haven’t found out much 
yet.” 

Think, if you can, how she felt when the White Rab- 
bit read out, at the top of his shrill lit-tle voice, the name 
“ Al-ice ! ” 


ALICE ON THE STAND. 


91 


CHAPTER XII. 

AL-ICE ON THE STAND. 

“ Here ! ” cried Al-ice, but she quite for-got how large 
she had grown in the last few min-utes, and jumped up 
in such haste that 
the edge of her 
skirt tipped the 
ju-ry box and turn- 
ed them all out on 
the heads of the 
crowd be-low ; and 
there they lay 
sprawl-ing a-bout, 
which made her 
think of a globe of 
gold-fish w h i c h 
she had up-set the 
week be-fore. 

“ Oh, I beg 
your par-don ! ” she 
said, and picked 
them up and put 
them backed in the ju-ry box as fast as she could. 

“ The tri-al can not go on,” said the King in a grave 





ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


voice, “ till all the men are back in place— all,” he said 
with great force and looked hard at Al-ice. 

She looked at the ju-ry box and saw that in her haste 
she had put the Liz-ard in head 
first and the poor thing was 
wav-ing its tail in the air, but 
could not move. She soon got it 
out and put it right ; “ not that 
it mat-ters much,” she thought; 
“ I should think it would be 
quite as much use in the tri-al 
one way up as the otli-er.” 

As soon as their slates and 
pen-cils had been hand-ed back 
to them, the ju-ry set to work to 
write out an ac-count of their 
fall, all but the Liz-ard, who seem- 
ed too weak 
to write, but 
sat and gazed 
up i n - 1 o the 
roof of the 
court. 


“What do 

you know of this case?” the King asked Al-ice. 

“ Not one thing,” said Al-ice. 

“ Not one thing, at all ? ” asked the King. 

“ Not one thing, at all,” said Al-ice. 




ALICE ON THE STAND. 


93 


“ Write that down,” the King said to the ju-ry. 

The King sat for some time and wrote in his note-book, 
then he called out, “ Si-lence ! ” and read from his book, “ Rule 
For-ty-two. Each one more than a mile high to leave the 
court.” 

All looked at Al-ice. 

“ I’m not a mile high,” said Al-ice. 

“ You are,” said the King. 

“ Not far from two miles high,” add-ed the Queen. 

“ Well, I shan’t go,” said Al-ice, “ for I know that’s a 
new rule you have just made.” 

“ It’s the first rule in the book,” said the King. 

“ Then it ought to be Kule One,” said Al-ice. 

The King turned pale and shut his note-book at once. 

“ The ju-ry can now take the case,” he said in a weak voice. 

“ There’s more to come yet, please your ma-jes-ty,” said 
the White Rab-bit, as he jumped up ; “ this thing has just 
been picked up.” 

“ What’s in it ? ” asked the Queen. 

“ I haven’t read it yet,” said the White Rab-bit, “ but it 
seems to be a note from the Knave of Hearts to some one.” 

“ Whose name is on it ? ” said one of the ju-rors. 

“ There’s no name on it,” said the White Rab-bit ; he 
looked at it with more care as he spoke, and add-ed, “ it isn’t 
a note at all ; it’s a set of rhymes.” 

“ Please your ma-jes-ty,” said the Knave, “ I didn’t write 
it, and they can’t prove that I did ; there’s no name signed 
at the end.” 


94 


ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 


“ If yon didn’t sign it,” said the King, “ that makes your 
case worse. You must have meant some harm or you’d 
have signed your name like an hon-est man.” 

All clapped their hands at this as it was the first smart 
thing the King had said that day. 

“ That proves his guilt,” said the Queen. 

“ It does not prove a thing,” said Al-ice, “ Why you 
don’t so much as know what the rhymes are.” 

“ Read them,” said the King. 

“ Where shall I be-gin, your ma-jes-ty ? ” the White Rab- 
bit asked. \ 

“ Why at the first verse, of course,” the King said look- 
ing quite grave, “ and go on till you come to the end ; then 
stop.” 

The White Rab-bit read : 

“ They told me you had been to her, 

And spoke of me to him : 

She gave me a good name, in-deed, 

But said I could not swim. 

“ He sent them word that I had gone 
(We know it to be true) : 

If she should push the mat-ter on 
What would be-come of you ? 

“ I gave her one, they gave him two, 

You gave us three, or more ; 

They all came back from him to you, 

Though they were mine be-fore. 


ALICE ON THE STAND. 


95 


“ My notion was, she liked him best, 

(Be-fore she had this fit) 

This must be kept from all the rest 
But him and you and it.” 

“ That’s the best thing we’ve heard yet,” said the King, 
rub-bing his hands as if much pleased ; “ so now let the 
ju-ry ” 

“ If one of you can tell what it means,” said Al-ice (she 
had grown so large by this time that she had no fear of the 
King) “ I should be glad to hear it. I don’t think there’s a 
grain of sense in it.” 

The ju-ry all wrote down on their slates, “ She doesn’t 
think there’s a grain of sense in it.” But no one tried to 
tell what it meant. 

“If there’s no sense in it,” said the King, “that saves 
a world of work, you know, as we jieedn’t try to find it. 
“ And yet I don’t know,” he went on, as he spread out the 
rhymes on his knee, and looked at them with one eye : “ I 
seem to find some sense in them — ‘ said I could not swim ’ — 
you can’t swim, can you ? ” he added, turn-ingto the Knave. 

The Knave shook his head with a sigh. “ Do I look 
like it ? ” he said. (Which it was plain he did not, as he 
was made of card board.) 

“ All right, so far,” said the King, and he went on : 
‘“We know it to be true” — that’s the ju-ry, of course — 
‘ I gave her one, they gave him two ’ — that must be what 
he did with the tarts, you know ” 


96 ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 

“ But it goes on, ‘ they all came back from him to you,’ ” 
said Al ice. 

“ Why, there they are,” said the King, point-ing to the 

tarts. “ Isn’t that 
as clear as can 
be ? Then it goes 
on, 4 before she 
had this fit’ — 
you don’t have 
fits, my dear, I 
think ? ” he said 
to the Queen. 

“No! no!” 
said the Queen 
in a great rage, 
throw-ing an ink- 
stand at the Liz- 
ard as she spoke. 

“ Then the 
words don’t fit 
you,” he said, 
and looked round 
the court with a 
smile. But no 
one spoke. “ It’s a pun,” he added in a fierce tone, then all 
the court laughed. 

“Let the ju-ry now bring in their verdict,” the King 



said. 


ALICE ON THE STAND. 


97 


“ No ! no ! ” said tlie Queen. “ Sen-tence first — then 
the ver-dict.” 

“ Such stuff ! ” said Al-ice out loud. “ Of course the ju-ry 
must make •” 

“ Hold your tongue ! ” screamed the Queen. 

“ 1 won’t ! ” said Al-ice. 

“ Off with her head ! ” shout-ed the Queen at the top 
of her voice. No one moved. 

“ Who cares for you ?” said Al-ice. (She had grown to 
her full size by this time.) “ You are noth-ing but a pack of 
cards ! ” 

At this the whole pack rose up in the air and flew down 
up-on her ; she gave a lit-tle scream and tried to beat them 
off — and found her-self ly-ing on the bank with her head 
in the lap of her sis-ter, who was brush-ing a- way some dead 
leaves that had flut-tered down from the trees on to her 
face. 

“ Wake up, Al-ice dear,” said her sis-ter ; “ why what a 
long sleep you have had ! ” 

“Oh, I’ve had such a strange dream ! ” said Al-ice, and 
then she told her sis-ter as well as she could all these 
strange things that you have just read a-bout ; and when 
she came to the end of it, her sis-ter kissed her and said : 
“ It was a strange dream, dear, I’m sure ; but run now in 
to your tea ; it’s get-ting late.” 

So Al-ice got up and ran off, think-ing while she ran, as 
well she might, what a won-der-ful dream it had been. 



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